fcT^Jiite"^" 


Ktoeratoe  Biographical 

NUMBER  5 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

BY 

HENRY  CHILDS  MERWIN 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 


BY 


HENKY  CHILDS  MERWIN 

n 


HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

Boston :  4  Park  Street ;  New  York :  11  East  Seventeenth  Street 
Chicago :  378-388  Wabash  Avenue 


V\5 


COPYRIGHT,   1901,    BY   HENRY   C.  MERWIN 
ALL   RIGHTS    RESERVED 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  FAGB 

I.  YOUTH  AND  TRAINING        ....  1 

II.  VIRGINIA  IN  JEFFERSON'S  DAY      .        .  16 

III.  MONTICELLO  AND  ITS  HOUSEHOLD     .        .  28 

IV.  JEFFERSON  IN  THE  REVOLUTION    .        .  36 
V.  REFORM  WORK  IN  VIRGINIA      ...  45 

VI.  GOVERNOR  OF  VIRGINIA          ...  59 

ENVOY  AT  PARIS 71 

SECRETARY  OF  STATE      .... 

THE  Two  PARTIES 98 

PRESIDENT  JEFFERSON    ....  114 

XI.  SECOND  PRESIDENTIAL  TERM     .        .        .  130 

XII.  A  PUBLIC  MAN  IN  PRIVATE  LIFE  .        .  149 


227631 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 


YOUTH   AND   TRAINING 

THOMAS  JEFFERSON  was  born  upon  a 
frontier  estate  in  Albemarle  County,  Vir 
ginia,  April  13,  1743.  His  father,  Peter 
Jefferson,  was  of  Welsh  descent,  not  of  aris 
tocratic  birth,  but  of  that  yeoman  class  which 
constitutes  the  backbone  of  all  societies. 
The  elder  Jefferson  had  uncommon  powers 
both  of  mind  and  body.  His  strength  was 
such  that  he  could  simultaneously  "  head 
up  "  —that  is,  raise  from  their  sides  to  an 
upright  position  —  two  hogsheads  of  tobacco, 
weighing  nearly  one  thousand  pounds  apiece. 
Like  Washington,  he  was  a  surveyor  ;  and 
there  is  a  tradition  that  once,  while  running 
his  lines  through  a  vast  wilderness,  his  as 
sistants  gave  out  from  famine  and  fatigue, 


. ''&'••  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

and  Peter  Jefferson  pushed  on  alone,  sleep 
ing  at  night  in  hollow  trees,  amidst  howling 
beasts  of  prey,  and  subsisting  on  the  flesh 
of  a  pack  mule  which  he  had  been  obliged 
to  kiU. 

Thomas  Jefferson  inherited  from  his  father 
i/a  love  of  mathematics  and  of  literature. 
Peter  Jefferson  had  not  received  a  classical 
education,  but  he  was  a  diligent  reader  of  a 
few  good  books,  chiefly  Shakespeare,  The 
Spectator,  Pope,  and  Swift ;  and  in  master 
ing  these  he  was  forming  his  mind  on  great 
literature  after  the  manner  of  many  another 
Virginian,  —  for  the  houses  of  that  colony 
held  English  books  as  they  held  English 
furniture.  The  edition  of  Shakespeare  (and 
it  is  a  handsome  one)  which  Peter  Jefferson 
used  is  still  preserved  among  the  heirlooms 
of  his  descendants. 

It  was  probably  in  his  capacity  of  surveyor 
that  Mr.  Jefferson  made  the  acquaintance 
of  the  Randolph  family,  and  he  soon  became 
the  bosom  friend  of  William  Randolph,  the 
young  proprietor  of  Tuckahoe.  The  Ran 
dolphs  had  been  for  ages  a  family  of  con- 


YOUTH  AND  TRAINING  3 

sideration  in  the  midland  counties  of  Eng 
land,  claiming  descent  from  the  Scotch  Earls 
of  Murray,  and  connected  by  blood  or  mar 
riage  with  many  of  the  English  nobility.  In 
1735  Peter  Jefferson  established  himself  as 
a  planter  by  patenting  a  thousand  acres  of 
land  in  Goochland  County,  his  estate  lying 
near  and  partly  including  the  outlying  hills, 
which  form  a  sort  of  picket  line  for  the 
Blue  Mountain  range.  At  the  same  time 
his  friend  William  Randolph  patented  an 
adjoining  estate  of  twenty-four  hundred 
acres ;  and  inasmuch  as  there  was  no  good 
site  for  a  house  on  Jefferson's  estate,  Mr. 
Randolph  conveyed  to  him  four  hundred 
acres  for  that  purpose,  the  consideration  ex 
pressed  in  the  deed,  which  is  still  extant, 
being  "  Henry  Weatherbourne's  biggest 
bowl  of  Arrack  punch." 

Here  Peter  Jefferson  built  his  house,  and 
here,  three  years  later,  he  brought  his  bride, 
—  a  handsome  girl  of  nineteen,  and  a  kins 
woman  of  William  Randolph,  being  Jane, 
oldest  child  of  Isham  Randolph,  then  Adju 
tant-General  of  Virginia.  She  was  born  in 


4  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

London,  in  the  parish  of  Shadwell,  and  Shad- 
well  was  the  name  given  by  Peter  Jefferson 
to  his  estate.  This  marriage  was  a  fortunate 
union  of  the  best  aristocratic  and  yeoman 
strains  in  Virginia. 

In  the  year  1744  the  new  County  of  Al- 
bemarle  was  carved  out  of  Goochland  County, 
and  Peter  Jefferson  was  appointed  one  of 
the  three  justices  who  constituted  the  county 
court  and  were  the  real  rulers  of  the  shire. 
He  was  made  also  Surveyor,  and  later  Colonel 
of  the  county.  This  last  office  was  regarded 
as  the  chief  provincial  honor  in  Virginia,  and 
it  was  especially  important  when  he  held  it, 
for  it  was  the  time  of  the  French  war,  and 
Albemarle  was  in  the  debatable  land. 

In  the  midst  of  that  war,  in  August, 
1757,  Peter  Jefferson  died  suddenly,  of  a 
disease  which  is  not  recorded,  but  which  was 
probably  produced  by  fatigue  and  exposure. 
He  was  a  strong,  just,  kindly  man,  sought 
for  as  a  protector  of  the  widow  and  the 
orphan,  and  respected  and  loved  by  Indians 
as  well  as  white  men.  Upon  his  deathbed 
he  left  two  injunctions  regarding  his  son 


YOUTH  AND  TRAINING  5 

Thomas :  one,  that  he  should  receive  a  clas 
sical  education  ;  the  other,  that  he  should 
never  be  permitted  to  neglect  the  physical 
exercises  necessary  for  health  and  strength. 
Of  these  dying  commands  his  son  often 
spoke  with  gratitude  ;  and  he  used  to  say 
that  if  he  were  obliged  to  choose  between 
the  education  and  the  estate  which  his  father 
gave  him,  he  would  choose  the  education. 
Peter  Jefferson  left  eight  children,  but  only 
one  son  besides  Thomas,  and  that  one  died 
in  infancy.  Less  is  known  of  Jefferson's 
mother ;  but  he  derived  from  her  a  love  of 
music,  an  extraordinary  keenness  of  sus 
ceptibility,  and  a  corresponding  refinement 
of  taste. 

His  father's  death  left  Jefferson  his  own 
master.  In  one  of  his  later  letters  he  says : 
"  At  fourteen  years  of  age  the  whole  care 
and  direction  of  myself  were  thrown  on  my 
self  entirely,  without  a  relative  or  a  friend 
qualified  to  advise  or  guide  me." 

The  first  use  that  he  made  of  his  liberty 
was  to  change  his  school,  and  to  become  a 
pupil  of  the  Rev.  James  Maury,  —  an  ex- 


6  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

cellent  clergyman  and  scholar,  of  Huguenot 
descent,  who  had  recently  settled  in  Albe- 
marle  County.  With  him  young  Jefferson 
continued  for  two  years,  studying  Greek  and 
Latin,  and  becoming  noted,  as  a  schoolmate 
afterward  reported,  for  scholarship,  industry, 
and  shyness.  He  was  a  good  runner,  a 
keen  fox-hunter,  and  a  bold  and  graceful 
rider. 

At  the  age  of  sixteen,  in  the  spring  of 
1760,  he  set  out  on  horseback  for  Williams- 
burg,  the  capital  of  Virginia,  where  he  pro 
posed  to  enter  the  college  of  William  and 
Mary.  Up  to  this  time  he  had  never  seen 
a  town,  or  even  a  village,  except  the  hamlet 
of  Charlottesville,  which  is  about  four  miles 
from  Shadwell.  Williamsburg  —  described 
in  contemporary  language  as  "the  centre  of 
taste,  fashion,  and  refinement  "  —  was  an 
unpaved  village,  of  about  one  thousand  in 
habitants,  surrounded  by  an  expanse  of  dark 
green  tobacco  fields  as  far  as  the  eye  could 
reach.  It  was,  however,  well  situated  upon 
a  plateau  midway  between  the  York  and 
James  rivers,  and  was  swept  by  breezes 


YOUTH  AND  TRAINING  7 

which  tempered  the  heat  of  the  summer  sun 
and  kept  the  town  free  from  mosquitoes. 

Williamsburg  was  also  well  laid  out,  and 
it  has  the  honor  of  having  served  as  a  model 
for  the  city  of  Washington.  It  consisted 
chiefly  of  a  single  street,  one  hundred  feet 
broad  and  three  quarters  of  a  mile  long, 
with  the  capitol  at  one  end,  the  college  at 
the  other,  and  a  ten-acre  square  with  public 
buildings  in  the  middle.  Here  in  his  palace 
lived  the  colonial  governor.  The  town  also 
contained  "  ten  or  twelve  gentlemen's  fami 
lies,  besides  merchants  and  tradesmen." 
These  were  the  permanent  inhabitants; 
and  during  the  "  season  "  —  the  midwinter 
months  —  the  planters'  families  came  to 
town  in  their  coaches,  the  gentlemen  on 
horseback,  and  the  little  capital  was  then  a 
scene  of  gayety  and  dissipation. 

Such  was  Williamsburg  in  1760  when 
Thomas  Jefferson,  the  frontier  planter's  son, 
rode  slowly  into  town  at  the  close  of  an  early 
spring  day,  surveying  with  the  outward  in 
difference,  but  keen  inward  curiosity  of  a 
countryman,  the  place  which  was  to  be  his 


8  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

residence  for  seven  years,  —  in  one  sense  the 
most  important,  because  the  most  formative, 
period  of  his  life.  He  was  a  tall  stripling, 
rather  slightly  built,  —  after  the  model  of 
the  Randolphs,  —  but  extremely  well-knit, 
muscular,  and  agile.  His  face  was  f reckled, 
and  his  features  were  somewhat  pointed.  His 
hair  is  variously  described  as  red,  reddish, 
and  sandy,  and  the  color  of  his  eyes  as  blue, 
gray,  and  also  hazel.  The  expression  of  his 
face  was  frank,  cheerful,  and  engaging.  He 
was  not  handsome  in  youth,  but  "  a  very 
good-looking  man  in  middle  age,  and  quite  a 
handsome  old  man."  At  maturity  he  stood 
six  feet  two  and  a  half  inches.  "  Mr.  Jef 
ferson,"  said  Mr.  Bacon,  at  one  time  the 
superintendent  of  his  estate,  "  was  well  pro 
portioned  and  straight  as  a  gun-barrel.  He 
was  like  a  fine  horse,  he  had  no  surplus  flesh. 
He  had  an  iron  constitution,  and  was  very 
strong." 

Jefferson  was  always  the  most  cheerful  and 
optimistic  of  men.  He  once  said,  after  re 
marking  that  something  must  depend  "on 
the  chapter  of  events :  "  "  I  am  in  the  habit 


YOUTH  AND  TRAINING  9 

of  turning  over  the  next  leaf  with  hope,  and, 
though  it  often  fails  me,  there  is  still  an 
other  and  another  behind."  No  doubt  this 
sanguine  trait  was  due  in  part  at  least  to 
his  almost  perfect  health.  He  was,  to  use 
his  own  language,  "blessed  with  organs  of 
digestion  which  accepted  and  concocted, 
without  ever  murmuring,  whatever  the  pal 
ate  chose  to  consign  to  them."  His  habits 
through  life  were  good.  He  never  smoked, 
he  drank  wine  in  moderation,  he  went  to 
bed  early,  he  was  regular  in  taking  exercise, 
either  by  walking  or,  more  commonly,  by 
riding  on  horseback. 

The  college  of  William  and  Mary  in  Jef 
ferson's  day  is  described  by  Mr.  Parton  as 
"a  medley  of  college,  Indian  mission,  and 
grammar  school,  ill-governed,  and  distracted 
by  dissensions  among  its  ruling  powers." 
But  Jefferson  had  a  thirst  for  knowledge 
and  a  capacity  for  acquiring  it,  which  made 
him  almost  independent  of  institutions  of 
learning.  Moreover,  there  was  one  profes 
sor  who  had  a  large  share  in  the  formation 
of  his  mind.  "  It  was  my  great  good  for- 


10  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tune,"  he  wrote  in  his  brief  autobiography, 
"and  what  probably  fixed  the  destinies  of 
my  life,  that  Dr.  William  Small,  of  Scotland, 
was  then  professor  of  mathematics  ;  a  man 
profound  in  most  of  the  useful  branches  of 
science,  with  a  happy  talent  of  communica 
tion  and  an  enlarged  liberal  mind.  He,  most 
happily  for  me,  soon  became  attached  to  me, 
and  made  me  his  daily  companion  when  not 
engaged  in  the  school ;  and  from  his  conver 
sation  I  got  my  first  views  of  the  expansion 
of  science,  and  of  the  system  of  things  in 
which  we  are  placed." 

Jefferson,  like  all  well-bred  Virginians, 
was  brought  up  as  an  Episcopalian ;  but  as 
a  young  man,  perhaps  owing  in  part  to  the 
influence  of  Dr.  Small,  he  ceased  to  believe 
in  Christianity  as  a  religion,  though  he  always 
at  home  attended  the  Episcopal  church,  and 
though  his  daughters  were  brought  up  in  that 
faith.  If  any  theological  term  is  to  be  ap 
plied  to  him,  he  should  be  called  a  Deist. 
Upon  the  subject  of  his  religious  faith, 
Jefferson  was  always  extremely  reticent. 
To  one  or  two  friends  only  did  he  disclose 


YOUTH  AND  TRAINING  11 

his  creed,  and  that  was  in  letters  which  were 
published  after  his  death.  When  asked, 
even  by  one  of  his  own  family,  for  his  opin 
ion  upon  any  religious  matter,  he  invariably 
refused  to  express  it,  saying  that  every  per 
son  was  bound  to  look  into  the  subject  for 
himself,  and  to  decide  upon  it  conscientiously, 
unbiased  by  the  opinions  of  others. 

Dr.  Small  introduced  Jefferson  to  other 
valuable  acquaintances ;  and,  boy  though  he 
was,  he  soon  became  the  fourth  in  a  group 
of  friends  which  embraced  the  three  most 
notable  men  in  the  little  metropolis.  These 
were,  beside  Dr.  Small,  Francis  Fauquier, 
the  acting  governor  of  the  province,  ap 
pointed  by  the  crown,  and  George  Wythe. 
Fauquier  was  a  courtly,  honorable,  highly 
cultivated  man  of  the  world,  a  disciple  of 
Voltaire,  and  a  confirmed  gambler,  who  had 
in  this  respect  an  unfortunate  influence  upon 
the  Virginia  gentry,  —  not,  however,  upon 
Jefferson,  who,  though  a  lover  of  horses, 
and  a  frequenter  of  races,  never  in  his  life 
gambled  or  even  played  cards.  Wythe  was 
then  just  beginning  a  long  and  honorable 


12  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

career  as  lawyer,  statesman,  professor,  and 
judge.  He  remained  always  a  firm  and  in 
timate  friend  of  Jefferson,  who  spoke  of  him, 
after  his  death,  as  "  my  second  father."  It 
is  an  interesting  fact  that  Thomas  Jefferson, 
John  Marshall,  and  Henry  Clay  were  all, 
in  succession,  law  students  in  the  office  of 
George  Wythe. 

Many  of  the  government  officials  and 
planters  who  flocked  to  Williamsburg  in 
the  winter  were  related  to  Jefferson  on  his 
mother's  side,  and  they  opened  their  houses 
to  him  with  Virginia  hospitality.  We  read 
also  of  dances  in  the  "  Apollo,"  the  ball-room 
of  the  old  Kaleigh  tavern,  and  of  musical 
parties  at  Gov.  Fauquier  's  house,  in  which 
Jefferson,  who  was  a  skillful  and  enthusiastic 
fiddler,  always  took  part.  "  I  suppose,"  he 
remarked  in  his  old  age,  "  that  during  at 
least  a  dozen  years  of  my  life,  I  played  no 
less  than  three  hours  a  day." 

At  this  period  he  was  somewhat  of  a 
dandy,  very  particular  about  his  clothes  and 
equipage,  and  devoted,  as  indeed  he  remained 
through  life,  to  fine  horses.  Virginia  ini- 


YOUTH  AND  TRAINING  13 

ported  more  thoroughbred  horses  than  any 
other  colony,  and  to  this  day  there  is  prob 
ably  a  greater  admixture  of  thoroughbred 
blood  there  than  in  any  other  State.  Dio- 
med,  winner  of  the  first  English  Derby, 
was  brought  over  to  Virginia  in  1799,  and 
founded  a  family  which,  even  now,  is  highly 
esteemed  as  a  source  of  speed  and  endurance. 
Jefferson  had  some  of  his  colts ;  and  both 
for  the  saddle  and  for  his  carriage  he  always 
used  high-bred  horses. 

Referring  to  the  Williamsburg  period  of 
his  life,  he  wrote  once  to  a  grandson :  "  When 
I  recollect  the  various  sorts  of  bad  company 
with  which  I  associated  from  time  to  time,  I 
am  astonished  I  did  not  turn  off  with  some  of 
them,  and  become  as  worthless  to  society  as 
they  were.  .  .  .  But  I  had  the  good  fortune 
to  become  acquainted  very  early  with  some 
characters  of  very  high  standing,  and  to  feel 
the  incessant  wish  that  I  could  ever  become 
what  they  were.  Under  temptations  and  dif 
ficulties,  I  would  ask  myself  what  would  Dr. 
Small,  Mr.  Wythe,  Peyton  Randolph  do  in 
this  situation  ?  What  course  in  it  will  as- 


14  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

sure  me  their  approbation?  I  am  certain 
that  this  mode  of  deciding  on  my  conduct 
tended  more  to  correctness  than  any  reason 
ing  powers  that  I  possesed." 

This  passage  throws  a  light  upon  Jeffer 
son's  character.  It  does  not  seem  to  occur  to 
him  that  a  young  man  might  require  some 
stronger  motive  to  keep  his  passions  in  check 
than  could  be  furnished  either  by  the  wish 
to  imitate  a  good  example  or  by  his  "  rea 
soning  powers."  To  Jefferson's  well-regu 
lated  mind  the  desire  for  approbation  was  a 
sufficient  motive.  He  was  particularly  sen 
sitive,  perhaps  morbidly  so,  to  disapproba 
tion.  The  respect,  the  good-will,  the  affec 
tion  of  his  countrymen  were  so  dear  to  him 
that  the  desire  to  retain  them  exercised  a 
great,  it  may  be  at  times,  an  undue  influence 
upon  him.  "  I  find,"  he  once  said,  "  the  pain 
of  a  little  censure,  even  when  it  is  unfounded, 
is  more  acute  than  the  pleasure  of  much 
praise." 

During  his  second  year  at  college,  Jeffer 
son  laid  aside  all  frivolities.  He  sent  home 
his  horses,  contenting  himself  with  a  mile 


YOUTH  AND  TRAINING  15 

run  out  and  back  at  nightfall  for  exercise, 
and  studying,  if  we  may  believe  the  biogra 
pher,  no  less  than  fifteen  hours  a  day.  This 
intense  application  reduced  the  time  of  his 
college  course  by  one  half;  and  after  the 
second  winter  at  Williamsburg  he  went  home 
with  a  degree  in  his  pocket,  and  a  volume  of 
Coke  upon  Lytleton  in  his  trunk. 


II 

VIRGINIA  IN  JEFFERSON'S  DAY 

To  a  young  Virginian  of  Jefferson's  stand 
ing  but  two  active  careers  were  open,  law  and 
politics,  and  in  almost  every  case  these  two, 
sooner  or  later,  merged  in  one.  The  condi 
tion  of  Virginia  was  very  different  from  that 
of  New  England,  —  neither  the  clerical  nor 
the  medical  profession  was  held  in  esteem. 
There  were  no  manufactures,  and  there  was 
no  general  commerce. 

Nature  has  divided  Virginia  into  two  parts  : 
the  mountainous  region  to  the  west  and  the 
broad  level  plain  between  the  mountains  and 
the  sea,  intersected  by  numerous  rivers,  in 
which,  far  back  from  the  ocean,  the  tide 
ebbs  and  flows.  In  this  tide-water  region 
were  situated  the  tobacco  plantations  which 
constituted  the  wealth  and  were  inhabited  by 
the  aristocracy  of  the  colony.  Almost  every 
planter  lived  near  a  river  and  had  his  own 


VIRGINIA  IN  JEFFERSON'S  DAY    17 

wharf,  whence  a  schooner  carried  his  tobacco 
to  London,  and  brought  back  wines,  silks, 
velvets,  guns,  saddles,  and  shoes. 

The  small  proprietors  of  land  were  com 
paratively  few  in  number,  and  the  whole 
constitution  of  the  colony,  political  and  so 
cial,  was  aristocratic.  Both  real  estate  and 
slaves  descended  by  force  of  law  to  the  eldest 
son,  so  that  the  great  properties  were  kept 
intact.  There  were  no  townships  and  no 
town  meetings.  The  political  unit  was  the 
parish ;  for  the  Episcopal  church  was  the  es 
tablished  church,  —  a  state  institution;  and 
the  parishes  were  of  great  extent,  there  being, 
as  a  rule,  but  one  or  two  parishes  in  a  county. 

The  clergy,  though  belonging  to  an  estab 
lishment,  were  poorly  paid,  and  not  revered  as 
a  class.  They  held  the  same  position  of  infe 
riority  in  respect  to  the  rich  planters  which 
the  clergy  of  England  held  in  respect  to  the 
country  gentry  at  the  same  period.  Being 
appointed  by  the  crown,  they  were  selected 
without  much  regard  to  fitness,  and  they 
were  demoralized  by  want  of  supervision, 
for  there  were  no  resident  bishops,  and, 


18  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

further,  by  the  uncertain  character  of  their 
incomes,  which,  being  paid  in  tobacco,  were 
subject  to  great  fluctuations.  A  few  were 
men  of  learning  and  virtue  who  performed 
their  duties  faithfully,  and  eked  out  their 
incomes  by  taking  pupils.  "It  was  these 
few,"  remarks  Mr.  Parton,  "  who  saved  civil 
ization  in  the  colony."  A  few  others  be 
came  cultivators  of  tobacco,  and  acquired 
wealth.  But  the  greater  part  of  the  clergy 
were  companions  and  hangers-on  of  the  rich 
planters,  —  examples  of  that  type  which 
Thackeray  so  well  describes  in  the  character 
of  Parson  Sampson  in  "The  Virginians." 
Strange  tales  were  told  of  these  old  Virginia 
parsons.  One  is  spoken  of  as  pocketing 
annually  a  hundred  dollars,  the  revenue  of  a 
legacy  for  preaching  four  sermons  a  year 
against  atheism,  gambling,  racing,  and  swear 
ing,  —  for  all  of  which  vices,  except  the  first, 
he  was  notorious. 

This  period,  the  middle  half  of  the  eigh 
teenth  century,  was,  as  the  reader  need  not 
be  reminded,  that  in  which  the  English 
church  sank  to  its  lowest  point.  It  was  the 


VIRGINIA  IN  JEFFERSON'S  DAY    19 

era  when  the  typical  country  parson  was  a 
convivial  fox-hunter;  when  the  Fellows  of 
colleges  sat  over  their  wine  from  four  o'clock, 
their  dinner  hour,  till  midnight  or  after ; 
when  the  highest  type  of  bishop  was  a 
learned  man  who  spent  more  time  in  his 
private  studies  than  in  the  duties  of  his 
office;  when  the  cathedrals  were  neglected 
and  dirty,  and  the  parish  churches  were 
closed  from  Sunday  to  Sunday.  In  Eng 
land,  the  reaction  produced  Methodism,  and, 
later,  the  Tractarian  movement ;  and  we  are 
told  that  even  in  Virginia,  "  swarms  of  Meth 
odists,  Moravians,  and  New-Light  Presbyte 
rians  came  over  the  border  from  Pennsylva 
nia,  and  pervaded  the  colony." 

Taxation  pressed  with  very  unequal  force 
upon  the  poor,  and  the  right  of  voting  was 
confined  to  freeholders.  There  was  no  sys 
tem  of  public  schools,  and  the  great  mass 
of  the  people  were  ignorant  and  coarse,  but 
morally  and  physically  sound,  —  a  good  sub 
structure  for  an  aristocratic  society.  Wealth 
being  concentrated  mainly  in  the  hands  of  a 
few,  Virginia  presented  striking  contrasts  of 


20  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

luxury  and  destitution,  whereas  in  the  neigh 
boring  colony  of  Pennsylvania,  where  wealth 
was  more  distributed  and  society  more  de 
mocratic,  thrift  and  prosperity  were  far  more 
common. 

"  In  Pennsylvania,"  relates  a  foreign  trav 
eler,  "  one  sees  great  numbers  of  wagons 
drawn  by  four  or  more  fine  fat  horses.  .  .  . 
In  the  slave  States  we  sometimes  meet  a 
ragged  black  boy  or  girl  driving  a  team  con 
sisting  of  a  lean  cow  and  a  mule ;  and  I  have 
seen  a  mule,  a  bull,  and  a  cow,  each  miserable 
in  its  appearance,  composing  one  team,  with 
a  half-naked  black  slave  or  two  riding  or 
driving  as  occasion  suited."  And  yet  be 
tween  Richmond  and  Fredericksburg,  "in 
the  afternoon,  as  our  road  lay  through  the 
woods,  I  was  surprised  to  meet  a  family 
party  traveling  along  in  as  elegant  a  coach 
as  is  usually  met  with  in  the  neighborhood 
of  London,  and  attended  by  several  gayly 
dressed  footmen." 

Virginia  society  just  before  the  Revolution 
perfectly  illustrated  Buckle's  remark  about 
leisure :  "  Without  leisure,  science  is  impos- 


VIRGINIA  IN  JEFFERSON'S  DAY     21 

sible ;  and  when  leisure  has  been  won,  most 
of  the  class  possessing  it  will  waste  it  in  the 
pursuit  of  pleasure,  and  a  few  will  employ 
it  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge."  Men  like 
Jefferson,  George  Wythe,  and  Madison  used 
their  leisure  for  the  good  of  their  fellow- 
beings  and  for  the  cultivation  of  their  minds ; 
whereas  the  greater  part  of  the  planters  — 
and  the  poor  whites  imitated  them  —  spent 
their  ample  leisure  in  sports,  in  drinking,  and 
in  absolute  idleness.  "  In  spite  of  the  Vir 
ginians'  love  for  dissipation,"  wrote  a  famous 
French  traveler,  "the  taste  for  reading  is 
commoner  among  men  of  the  first  rank  than 
in  any  other  part  of  America  ;  but  the  popu 
lace  is  perhaps  more  ignorant  there  than 
elsewhere."  "  The  Virginia  virtues,"  says 
Mr.  Henry  Adams,  "  were  those  of  the  field 
and  farm  —  the  simple  and  straightforward 
mind,  the  notions  of  courage  and  truth,  the 
absence  of  mercantile  sharpness  and  quick 
ness,  the  rusticity  and  open-handed  hospi 
tality."  Virginians  of  the  upper  class  were 
remarkable  for  their  high-bred  courtesy,  —  a 
trait  so  inherent  that  it  rarely  disappeared 


22  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

even  in  the  bitterness  of  political  disputes 
and  divisions.  This,  too,  was  the  natural 
product  of  a  society  based  not  on  trade  or 
commerce,  but  on  land.  "  I  blush  for  my 
own  people,"  wrote  Dr.  Channing,  from  Vir 
ginia,  in  1791,  "when  I  compare  the  selfish 
prudence  of  a  Yankee  with  the  generous  con 
fidence  of  a  Virginian.  Here  I  find  great 
vices,  but  greater  virtues  than  I  left  behind 
me."  There  was  a  largeness  of  temper  and 
of  feeling  in  the  Virginia  aristocracy,  which 
seems  to  be  inseparable  from  people  living 
in  a  new  country,  upon  the  outskirts  of  civ 
ilization.  They  had  the  pride  of  birth,  but 
they  recognized  other  claims  to  considera 
tion,  and  were  as  far  as  possible  from  esti 
mating  a  man  according  to  the  amount  of 
his  wealth. 

Slavery  itself  was  probably  a  factor  for 
good  in  the  character  of  such  a  man  as  Jef 
ferson,  —  it  afforded  a  daily  exercise  in  the 
virtues  of  benevolence  and  self-control.  How 
he  treated  the  blacks  may  be  gathered  from 
a  story,  told  by  his  superintendent,  of  a  slave 
named  Jim  who  had  been  caught  stealing 


VIRGINIA  IN  JEFFERSON'S  DAY    23 

nails  from  the  nail-factory :  "  When  Mr. 
Jefferson  came,  I  sent  for  Jim,  and  I  never 
saw  any  person,  white  or  black,  feel  as  badly 
as  he  did  when  he  saw  his  master.  The  tears 
streamed  down  his  face,  and  he  begged  for 
pardon  over  and  over  again.  I  felt  very 
badly  myself.  Mr.  Jefferson  turned  to  me 
and  said, '  Ah,  sir,  we  can't  punish  him.  He 
has  suffered  enough  already.'  He  then  talked 
to  him,  gave  him  a  heap  of  good  advice,  and 
sent  him  to  the  shop.  .  .  .  Jim  said :  4  Well 
I  'se  been  a-seeking  religion  a  long  time,  but 
I  never  heard  anything  before  that  sounded 
so,  or  made  me  feel  so,  as  I  did  when  Master 
said,  "  Go,  and  don't  do  so  any  more,"  and 
now  I  'se  determined  to  seek  religion  till  I 
find  it;'  and  sure  enough  he  afterwards 
came  to  me  for  a  permit  to  go  and  be  bap 
tized.  .  .  .  He  was  always  a  good  servant 
afterward." 

Another  element  that  contributed  to  the 
efficiency  and  the  high  standard  of  the  early 
Virginia  statesman  was  a  good,  old-fashioned 
classical  education.  They  were  familiar,  to 
use  Matthew  Arnold's  famous  expression, 


24  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

"  with  the  best  that  has  ever  been  said  or 
done."  This  was  no  small  advantage  to  men 
who  were  called  upon  to  act  as  founders  of 
a  republic  different  indeed  from  the  repub 
lics  of  Greece  and  Rome,  but  still  based  upon 
the  same  principles,  and  demanding  an 
exercise  of  the  same  heroic  virtues.  The 
American  Revolution  would  never  have  cut 
quite  the  figure  in  the  world  which  history 
assigns  to  it,  had  it  not  been  conducted  with 
a  kind  of  classic  dignity  and  decency ;  and 
to  this  result  nobody  contributed  more  than 
Jefferson. 

Such  was  Virginia  in  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury,  —  at  the  base  of  society,  the  slaves ; 
next,  a  lower  class,  rough,  ignorant,  and 
somewhat  brutal,  but  still  wholesome,  and 
possessing  the  primitive  virtues  of  courage 
and  truth ;  and  at  the  top,  the  landed  gen 
try,  luxurious,  proud,  idle  and  dissipated 
for  the  most  part,  and  yet  blossoming  into 
a  few  characters  of  a  type  so  high  that  the 
world  has  hardly  seen  a  better.  Had  he 
been  born  in  Europe,  Jefferson  would  doubt 
less  have  devoted  himself  to  music,  or  to 


VIRGINIA  IN  JEFFERSON'S  DAY    25 

architecture,  or  to  literature,  or  to  science, 
—  for  in  all  these  directions  his  taste  was 
nearly  equally  strong ;  but  these  careers  be 
ing  closed  to  him  by  the  circumstances  of 
the  colony,  he  became  a  lawyer,  and  then, 
under  pressure  of  the  Revolution,  a  politician 
and  statesman. 

During  the  four  years  following  his  grad 
uation,  Jefferson  spent  most  of  the  winter 
months  at  Williamsburg,  pursuing  his  legal 
and  other  studies,  and  the  rest  of  the  year 
upon  the  family  plantation,  the  management 
of  which  had  devolved  upon  him.  Now,  as 
always,  he  was  the  most  industrious  of  men. 
He  lived,  as  Mr.  Parton  remarks,  "  with  a 
pen  in  his  hand."  He  kept  a  garden  book, 
a  farm  book,  a  weather  book,  a  receipt  book, 
a  cash  book,  and,  while  he  practiced  law,  a 
fee  book.  Many  of  these  books  are  still  pre 
served,  and  the  entries  are  as  legible  now  as 
when  they  were  first  written  down  in  Jef 
ferson's  small  but  clear  and  graceful  hand,  — 
the  hand  of  an  artist.  Jefferson,  as  one  of 
his  old  friends  once  remarked,  hated  super 
ficial  knowledge  ;  and  he  dug  to  the  roots  of 


20  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

the  common  law,  reading  deeply  in  old  re 
ports  written  in  law  French  and  law  Latin, 
and  especially  studying  Magna  Charta  and 
Bracton. 

He  found  time  also  for  riding,  for  music, 
and  dancing ;  and  in  his  twentieth  year  he 
became  enamored  of  Miss  Rebecca  Burwell, 
a  Williamsburg  belle  more  distinguished, 
tradition  reports,  for  beauty  than  for  clever 
ness.  But  Jefferson  was  not  yet  in  a  posi 
tion  to  marry,  —  he  even  contemplated  a 
foreign  tour;  and  the  girl,  somewhat  ab 
ruptly,  married  another  lover.  The  wound 
seems  not  to  have  been  a  deep  one.  Jeffer 
son,  in  fact,  though  he  found  his  chief  happi 
ness  in  family  affection,  and  though  capable 
of  strong  and  lasting  attachments,  was  not 
the  man  for  a  romantic  passion.  He  was  a 
philosopher  of  the  reasonable,  eighteenth- 
century  type.  No  one  was  more  kind  and 
just  in  the  treatment  of  his  slaves,  but  he 
did  not  free  them,  as  George  Wythe,  perhaps 
foolishly,  did;  and  he  was  even  cautious 
about  promulgating  his  views  as  to  the  folly 
and  wickedness  of  slavery,  though  he  did  his 


VIRGINIA  IN  JEFFERSON'S  DAY    27 

best  to  promote  its  abolition  by  legislative 
measures.  There  was  not  in  Jefferson  the 
material  for  a  martyr  or  a  Don  Quixote ; 
but  that  was  Nature's  fault,  not  his.  It  may 
be  said  of  every  particular  man  that  there 
is  a  certain  depth  to  which  he  cannot  sink, 
and  there  is  a  certain  height  to  which  he 
cannot  rise.  Within  the  intermediate  zone 
there  is  ample  exercise  for  free-will ;  and  no 
man  struggled  harder  than  Jefferson  to  ful 
fill  all  the  obligations  which,  as  he  conceived, 
were  laid  upon  him. 


Ill 

MONTICELLO   AND  ITS   HOUSEHOLD 

IN  April,  1764,  Jefferson  came  of  age, 
and  his  first  public  act  was  a  characteristic 
one.  For  the  benefit  of  the  neighborhood, 
he  procured  the  passage  of  a  statute  to  au 
thorize  the  dredging  of  the  Rivanna  River 
upon  which  his  own  estate  bordered  in  part. 
He  then  by  private  subscriptions  raised  a 
sum  sufficient  for  carrying  out  this  purpose ; 
and  in  a  short  time  the  stream,  upon  which 
before  a  bark  canoe  would  hardly  have 
floated,  was  made  available  for  the  transpor 
tation  of  farm  produce  to  the  James  River, 
and  thence  to  the  sea. 

In  1766,  he  made  a  journey  to  Philadel 
phia,  in  order  to  be  inoculated  for  smallpox, 
traveling  in  a  light  gig  drawn  by  a  high- 
spirited  horse,  and  narrowly  escaping  death 
by  drowning  in  one  of  the  numerous  rivers 
which  had  to  be  forded  between  Charlottes- 


MONTICELLO  AND  ITS  HOUSEHOLD    29 

ville  and  Philadelphia.  In  the  following 
year,  about  the  time  of  his  twenty-fourth 
birthday,  he  was  admitted  to  the  bar,  and 
entered  almost  immediately  upon  a  large 
and  lucrative  practice.  He  remained  at  the 
bar  only  seven  years,  but  during  most  of 
this  time  his  professional  income  averaged 
more  than  £2500  a  year  ;  and  he  increased 
his  paternal  estate  from  1900  acres  to  5000 
acres.  He  argued  with  force  and  fluency, 
but  his  voice  was  not  suitable  for  public 
speaking,  and  soon  became  husky.  More 
over,  Jefferson  had  an  intense  repugnance 
to  the  arena.  He 


nervous  horror  fromji  personal^contest,  and 
Iiated  to  be--di^w3x3ntoa  discussion.     The 


turmoil  and  confusion  of  a  public  body  were 
hideous  to  him  ;  —  it  was  as  a  writer,  not  as 
a  speaker,  that  he  won  fame,  first  in  the 
Virginia  Assembly,  and  afterward  in  the 
Continental  Congress. 

In  October,  1768,  Jefferson  was  chosen 
to  represent  Albemarle  County  in  the  House 
of  Burgesses  of  Virginia;  and  thus  began 
his  long  political  career  of  forty  years.  A 


30  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

resolution  which  he  formed  at  the  outset  is 
stated  in  the  following  letter  written  in  1792 
to  a  friend  who  had  offered  him  a  share  in 
an  undertaking  which  promised  to  be  profit 
able  :  — 

"  When  I  first  entered  on  the  stage  of 
public  life  (now  twenty-four  years  ago)  I 
came  to  a  resolution  never  to  engage,  while 
in  public  office,  in  any  kind  of  enterprise  for 
the  improvement  of  my  fortune,  nor  to  wear 
any  other  character  than  that  of  a  farmer. 
I  have  never  departed  from  it  in  a  single 
instance  ;  and  I  have  in  multiplied  instances 
found  myself  happy  in  being  able  to  decide 
and  to  act  as  a  public  servant,  clear  of  all 
interest,  in  the  multiform  questions  that 
have  arisen,  wherein  I  have  seen  others  em 
barrassed  and  biased  by  having  got  them 
selves  in  a  more  interested  situation." 

During  the  next  few  years  there  was  a 
lull  in  political  affairs,  —  a  sullen  calm  be 
fore  the  storm  of  the  Revolution ;  but  they 
were  important  years  in  Mr.  Jefferson's  life. 
In  February,  1770,  the  house  at  Shadwell, 
where  he  lived  with  his  mother  and  sisters, 


MONTICELLO  AND  ITS  HOUSEHOLD    31 

was  burned  to  the  ground,  while  the  family 
were  away.  "  Were  none  of  my  books 
saved  ?  "  Jefferson  asked  of  the  negro  who 
came  to  him,  breathless,  with  news  of  the 
disaster.  "  No,  master,"  was  the  reply, 
"  but  we  saved  the  fiddle." 

In  giving  his  friend  Page  an  account  of 
the  fire,  Jefferson  wrote  :  "  On  a  reasonable 
estimate,  I  calculate  the  cost  of  the  books 
burned  to  have  been  £200.  Would  to  God 
it  had  been  the  money,  —  then  had  it  never 
cost  me  a  sigh  !  "  Beside  the  books,  Jeffer 
son  lost  most  of  his  notes  and  papers  ;  but 
no  mishap,  not  caused  by  his  own  fault,  ever 
troubled  his  peace  of  mind. 

After  the  fire,  his  mother  and  the  children 
took  temporary  refuge  in  the  home  of  an 
overseer,  and  Jefferson  repaired  to  Monti- 
cello,  —  as  he  had  named  the  elevated  spot 
on  the  paternal  estate  where  he  had  already 
begun  to  build  the  house  which  was  his 
home  for  the  remainder  of  his  life. 

Monticello  is  a  small  outlying  peak,  upon 
the  outskirts  of  the  mountainous  part  of 
Virginia,  west  of  the  tide-water  region,  and 


32  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

rising  580  feet  above  the  plain  at  its  foot. 
Upon  its  summit  there  is  a  space  of  about 
six  acres,  leveled  partly  by  nature  and  partly 
by  art;  and  here,  one  hundred  feet  back 
from  the  brow  of  the  hill,  Jefferson  built  his 
house.  It  is  a  long,  low  building,  —  still 
standing,  —  with  a  Grecian  portico  in  front, 
surmounted  by  a  cupola.  The  road  by 
which  it  is  approached  winds  round  and 
round,  so  as  to  make  the  ascent  less  diffi 
cult.  In  front  of  the  house  three  long  ter 
races,  terminating  in  small  pavilions,  were 
constructed  ;  and  upon  the  northern  terrace, 
or  in  its  pavilion,  Jefferson  and  his  friends 
used  to  sit  on  summer  nights  gazing  off 
toward  the  Blue  Ridge,  some  eighty  miles 
distant,  or  upon  the  nearer  peaks  of  the  Rag 
ged  Mountains.  The  altitude  is  such  that 
neither  dew  nor  mosquitoes  can  reach  it. 

To  this  beautiful  but  as  yet  uncompleted 
mountain  home,  Jefferson,  in  January,  1772, 
brought  his  bride.  She  was  Martha  Skel- 
ton,  who  had  been  left  a  widow  at  nineteen, 
and  was  now  twenty-two,  a  daughter  of  John 
Wayles,  a  leading  and  opulent  lawyer. 


MONTICELLO  AND  ITS  HOUSEHOLD    33 

Martha  Skelton  was  a  tall,  beautiful,  highly 
educated  young  woman,  of  graceful  carriage, 
with  hazel  eyes,  literary  in  her  tastes,  a 
skillful  performer  upon  the  spinnet,  and  a 
notable  housewife  whose  neatly  kept  account 
books  are  still  preserved.  They  were  mar 
ried  at  "  The  Forest,"  her  father's  estate  in 
Charles  City  County,  and  immediately  set 
out  for  Monticello. 

Two  years  later,  in  1774,  died  Dabney 
Carr,  a  brilliant  and  patriotic  young  lawyer, 
Jefferson's  most  intimate  friend,  and  the 
husband  of  his  sister  Martha.  Dabney 
Carr  left  six  small  children,  whom,  with 
their  mother,  Jefferson  took  under  his  wing, 
and  they  were  brought  up  at  Monticello  as 
if  they  had  been  his  own  children.  Jeffer- 
son  loved  children,  and  he  had,  in  common  (/ 
with  that  very  different  character,  Aaron 
Burr,  an  instinct  for  teaching.  While  still 
a  young  man  himself,  he  was  often  called 
upon  to  direct  the  studies  of  other  young 
men,  —  Madison  and  Monroe  were  in  this 
sense  his  pupils  ;  and  the  founding  of  the 
University  of  Virginia  was  an  achievement 


34  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

long  anticipated  by  him  and  enthusiastically 
performed. 

Jefferson  was  somewhat  unfortunate  in  his 
own  children,  for,  of  the  six  that  were  born 
to  him,  only  two,  Martha  and  Maria,  lived 
to  grow  up.  Maria  married  but  died  young, 
leaving  one  child.  Martha,  the  first-born, 
was  a  brilliant,  cheerful,  wholesome  woman. 
She  married  Thomas  Mann  Randolph,  after 
ward  governor  of  Virginia.  "  She  was  just 
like  her  father,  in  this  respect,"  says  Mr. 
Bacon,  the  superintendent,  —  "she  was  al 
ways  busy.  If  she  was  n't  reading  or  writ 
ing,  she  was  always  doing  something.  She 
used  to  sit  in  Mr.  Jefferson's  room  a  great 
deal,  and  sew,  or  read,  or  talk,  as  he  would 
be  busy  about  something  else."  John  Ban- 
dolph  of  Koanoke  once  toasted  her  —  and  it 
was  after  his  quarrel  with  her  father  —  as 
the  sweetest  woman  in  Virginia.  She  left 
ten  children,  and  many  of  her  descendants 
are  still  living. 

To  her,  and  to  his  other  daughter,  Maria, 
who  is  described  as  being  more  beautiful 
and  no  less  amiable  than  her  sister,  but  not 


MONTICELLO  AND  ITS  HOUSEHOLD    35 

so  intellectual,  Jefferson  owed  the  chief  hap 
piness  of  his  life.  Like  many  another  man 
who  has  won  fame  and  a  high  position  in  the 
world,  he  counted  these  things  but  as  dust 
and  ashes  in  comparison  with  family  affec 
tion. 


IV 

JEFFEKSON   IN   THE   KEVOLUTION 

SHOETLY  after  Mr.  Jefferson's  marriage, 
the  preliminary  movements  of  the  Revolu 
tion  began,  and  though  he  took  an  active 
part  in  them  it  was  not  without  reluctance. 
Even  after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  namely, 
in  November,  1775,  he  wrote  to  a  kinsman 
that  there  was  not  a  man  in  the  British 
Empire  who  more  cordially  loved  a  union 
with  Great  Britain  than  he  did.  John  Jay 
said  after  the  Revolution :  "  During  the 
course  of  my  life,  and  until  the  second  peti 
tion  of  Congress  in  1775,  I  never  did  hear 
any  American  of  any  class  or  description 
express  a  wish  for  the  independence  of  the 
colonies." 

But  these  friendly  feelings  were  first  out 
raged  and  then  extinguished  by  a  long  series 
of  ill-considered  and  oppressive  acts,  cover 
ing,  with  some  intermissions,  a  period  of 


JEFFERSON  IN  THE  REVOLUTION    37 

about  twelve  years.  Of  these  the  most  note 
worthy  were  the  Stamp  Act,  which  amounted 
to  taxation  without  representation,  and  the 
impost  on  tea,  which  was  coupled  with  a 
provision  that  the  receipts  should  be  applied 
to  the  salaries  of  officers  of  the  crown,  thus 
placing  them  beyond  the  control  of  the  local 
assemblies.  The  crown  officers  were  also 
authorized  to  grant  salaries  and  pensions  at 
their  discretion;  and  a  board  of  revenue 
commissioners  for  the  whole  country  was  es 
tablished  at  Boston,  and  armed  with  despotic 
powers.  These  proceedings  amounted  to  a 
deprivation  of  liberty,  and  they  were  aggra 
vated  by  the  king's  contemptuous  rejection 
of  the  petitions  addressed  to  him  by  the 
colonists.  We  know  what  followed,  —  the 
burning  of  the  British  war  schooner,  Gaspee, 
by  leading  citizens  of  Providence,  and  the 
famous  tea-party  in  Boston  harbor. 

Meanwhile  Virginia  had  not  been  inactive. 
In  March,  1772,  a  few  young  men,  members 
of  the  House  of  Burgesses,  met  at  the  Ra 
leigh  Tavern  in  Williamsburg.  They  were 
Patrick  Henry,  Richard  Henry  Lee  and  his 


38  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

brother,  Thomas  Jefferson,  and  a  few  others. 
They  drew  up  several  resolutions,  the  most 
important  of  which  called  for  the  appoint 
ment  of  a  standing  committee  and  for  an 
invitation  to  the  other  colonies  to  appoint 
like  committees  for  mutual  information  and 
assistance  in  the  struggle  against  the  crown. 
A  similar  resolution  had  been  adopted  in 
Massachusetts  two  years  before,  but  without 
any  practical  result.  The  Virginia  resolu 
tion  was  passed  the  next  day  by  the  House 
of  Burgesses,  and  it  gave  rise  to  those  pro 
ceedings  which  ushered  in  the  Revolution. 

The  first  Continental  Congress  was  to  meet 
in  Philadelphia,  in  September,  1774 ;  and 
Jefferson,  in  anticipation,  prepared  a  draft 
of  instructions  for  the  delegates  who  were  to 
be  elected  by  Virginia.  Being  taken  ill 
himself,  on  his  way  to  the  convention,  he 
sent  forward  a  copy  of  these  instructions. 
They  were  considered  too  drastic  to  be 
adopted  by  the  convention ;  but  some  of  the 
members  caused  them  to  be  published  under 
the  title  of  "  A  Summary  View  of  the  Rights 
of  America."  The  pamphlet  was  extensively 


JEFFERSON  IN  THE  REVOLUTION    39 

read  in  this  country,  and  a  copy  which  had 
been  sent  to  London  falling  into  the  hands 
of  Edmund  Burke,  he  had  it  reprinted  in 
England,  where  it  ran  through  edition  after 
edition.  Jefferson's  name  thus  became 
known  throughout  the  colonies  and  in  Eng 
land. 

The  "  Summary  View "  is  in  reality  a 
political  essay.  Its  author  wasted  no  time 
in  discussing  the  specific  legal  and  consti 
tutional  questions  which  had  arisen  between 
the  colonies  and  the  crown ;  but  he  went  to 
the  root  of  the  matter,  and  with  one  or  two 
generalizations  as  bold  and  original  as  if 
they  had  been  made  by  Rousseau,  he  cut  the 
Gordian  knot,  and  severed  America  from  the 
Parliament  of  Great  Britain.  He  admitted 
some  sort  of  dependence  upon  the  crown, 
but  his  two  main  principles  were  these :  (1) 
that  the  soil  of  this  country  belonged  to  the 
people  who  had  settled  and  improved  it,  and 
that  the  crown  had  no  right  to  sell  or  give  it 
away ;  (2)  that  the  right  of  self-government 
was  a  right  natural  to  every  people,  and  that 
Parliament,  therefore,  had  no  authority  to 


40  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

make  laws  for  America.  Jefferson  was 
always  about  a  century  in  advance  of  his 
time  ;  and  the  "  Summary  View  "  substan 
tially  anticipated  what  is  now  the  acknow 
ledged  relation  of  England  to  her  colonies. 

Jefferson  was  elected  a  member  of  the 
Continental  Congress  at  its  second  session  ; 
and  he  made  a  rapid  journey  to  Philadelphia 
in  a  chaise,  with  two  led  horses  behind, 
reaching  there  the  night  before  Washington 
set  out  for  Cambridge.  The  Congress  was 
composed  mainly  of  young  men.  Franklin, 
the  oldest  member,  was  seventy-one,  and  a 
few  others  were  past  sixty.  Washington 
was  forty-three  ;  John  Adams,  forty ;  Patrick 
Henry,  a  year  or  two  younger ;  John  Rut- 
ledge,  thirty-six;  his  brother,  twenty-six; 
John  Langdon  and  William  Paca,  thirty-five, 
John  Jay,  thirty ;  Thomas  Stone,  thirty-two, 
and  Jefferson,  thirty-two. 

Jefferson  soon  became  intimate  with  John 
Adams,  who  in  later  years  said  of  him : 
"  Though  a  silent  member  of  Congress,  he 
was  so  prompt,  frank,  explicit,  and  decisive 
upon  committees  and  in  conversation  —  not 


JEFFERSON  IN  THE  REVOLUTION    41 

even  Samuel  Adams  was  more  so  —  that  he 
soon  seized  upon  my  heart." 

Jefferson,  as  we  have  seen,  was  not  fitted 
to  shine  as  an  orator,  still  less  in  debate. 
But  as  a  writer  he  had  that  capacity  for  style 
which  comes,  if  it  comes  at  all,  as  a  gift  of 
nature  ;  which  needs  to  be  supplemented,  but 
which  cannot  be  supplied,  by  practice  and 
study.  In  some  of  his  early  letters  there 
are  slight  reminders  of  Dr.  Johnson's  man 
ner,  and  still  more  of  Sterne's.  Sterne  in 
deed  was  one  of  his  favorite  authors.  How 
ever,  these  early  traces  of  imitation  were 
absorbed  very  quickly ;  and,  before  he  was 
thirty,  Jefferson  became  master  of  a  clear, 
smooth,  polished,  picturesque,  and  individual 
style.  To  him,  therefore,  his  associates  natu 
rally  turned  when  they  needed  such  a  pro 
clamation  to  the  world  as  the  Declaration  of 
Independence ;  and  that  document  is  very 
characteristic  of  its  author.  It  was  imagina 
tion  that  gave  distinction  to  Jefferson  both 
as  a  man  and  as  a  writer.  He  never  dashed 
off  a  letter  which  did  not  contain  some  play 
of  fancy ;  and  whether  he  was  inventing  a 


42  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

plough  or  forecasting  the  destinies  of  a  great 
Democracy,  imagination  qualified  the  per 
formance. 

One  of  the  most  effective  forms  in  which 
imagination  displays  itself  in  prose  is  by  the 
use  of  a  common  word  in  such  a  manner  and 
context  that  it  conveys  an  uncommon  mean 
ing.  There  are  many  examples  of  this  rhe 
torical  art  in  Jefferson's  writings,  but  the 
most  notable  one  occurs  in  the  noble  first 
paragraph  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence  :  "  When,  in  the  course  of  human 
events,  it  becomes  necessary  for  one  people 
to  dissolve  the  political  bands  which  have 
connected  them  with  another,  and  to  assume 
among  the  powers  of  the  earth  the  separate 
and  equal  station  to  which  the  Laws  of 
Nature  and  of  Nature's  God  entitle  them,  a 
decent  respect  to  the  opinions  of  mankind 
requires  that  they  should  declare  the  causes 
which  impel  them  to  the  separation." 

Upon  this  paragraph  Mr.  Parton  elo 
quently  observes  :  "  The  noblest  utterance  of 
the  whole  composition  is  the  reason  given 
for  making  the  Declaration,  —  '•A  decent 


JEFFERSON  IN  THE  REVOLUTION    43 

respect  for  the  opinions  of  mankind.'  This 
touches  the  heart.  Among  the  best  emotions 
that  human  nature  knows  is  the  veneration 
of  man  for  man.  This  recognition  of  the 
public  opinion  of  the  world  —  the  sum  of  hu 
man  sense  —  as  the  final  arbiter  in  all  such 
controversies  is  the  single  phrase  of  the  docu 
ment  which  Jefferson  alone,  perhaps,  of  all 
the  Congress,  could  have  originated  ;  and  in 
point  of  merit  it  was  worth  all  the  rest." 

Franklin  and  John  Adams,  who  were  on 
the  committee  with  Jefferson,  made  a  few 
verbal  changes  in  his  draught  of  the  De 
claration,  and  it  was  then  discussed  and  re 
viewed  by  Congress  for  three  days.  Congress 
made  eighteen  suppressions,  six  additions, 
and  ten  alterations ;  and  it  must  be  admitted 
that  most  of  these  were  improvements.  For 
example,  Jefferson  had  framed  a  paragraph 
in  which  the  king  was  severely  censured  for 
opposing  certain  measures  looking  to  the  sup 
pression  of  the  slave  trade.  This  would  have 
come  with  an  ill  grace  from  the  Americans, 
since  for  a  century  New  England  had  been 
enriching  herself  by  that  trade,  and  the  south 
ern  colonies  had  subsisted  upon  the  labor 


44  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

which   it   brought   them.     Congress  wisely 
struck  out  the  paragraph. 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  was  re 
ceived  with  rapture  throughout  the  country. 
Everywhere  it  was  read  aloud  to  the  people 
who  gathered  to  hear  it,  amid  the  booming 
of  guns,  the  ringing  of  bells,  and  the  display 
of  fireworks.    In  Philadelphia,  after  the  read 
ing,  the  late  king's  coat  of  arms  was  burned 
in  Independence  Square ;  in  New  York  the 
leaden  statue,  in  Bowling  Green,  of  George 
III.  was  "  laid    prostrate  in  the    dust,"  and 
ordered  to  be  run  into  bullets.    Virginia  had 
already  stricken  the  king's  name  from  her 
prayer-book ;  and  Khode  Island  now  forbade 
her  people  to  pray   for  the   king,  as  king, 
under  a  penalty  of  one  hundred   thousand 
pounds  !     The  Declaration  of  Independence, 
both  as  a  political  and  literary  document,  has 
stood  the  test  of  time.     It  has  all  the  classic 
qualities  of  an  oration  by  Demosthenes ;  and 
even  that  passage  in  it  which  has  been  criti 
cised  —  that,  namely,  which  pronounces  all 
men  to  be  created  equal  —  is  true  in  a  sense, 
the  truth  of  which  it  will  take  a  century  or 
two  yet  to  develop. 


REFORM   WORK    IN   VIRGINIA 

IN  September,  1776,  Jefferson,  having 
resigned  his  seat  in  Congress  to  engage  in 
duties  nearer  home,  returned  to  Monticello. 
A  few  weeks  later,  a  messenger  from  Con 
gress  arrived  to  inform  him  that  he  had 
been  elected  a  joint  commissioner  with  Dr. 
Franklin  and  Silas  Deane  to  represent  at 
Paris  the  newly  formed  nation.  His  heart 
had  long  been  set  upon  foreign  travel;  but 
he  felt  obliged  to  decline  this  appointment, 
first  on  account  of  the  ill  health  of  his  wife, 
and  secondly,  because  he  was  needed  in  Vir 
ginia  as  a  legislator.  Not  since  Lycurgus 
gave  laws  to  the  Spartans  had  there  been 
such  an  opportunity  as  then  existed  in  the 
United  States.  John  Adams  declared : 
"  The  best  lawgivers  of  antiquity  would  re 
joice  to  live  at  a  period  like  this  when,  for 
the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  world, 


46  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

three  millions  of  people  are  deliberately 
choosing  their  government  and  institutions." 

Of  all  the  colonies,  Virginia  offered  the 
best  field  for  reform,  because,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  she  had  by  far  the  most  aristo 
cratic  political  and  social  system ;  and  it  is 
extraordinary  how  quickly  the  reform  was 
effected  by  Jefferson  and  his  friends.  In 
ordinary  times  of  peace  the  task  would  have 
been  impossible;  but  in  throwing  off  the 
English  yoke,  the  colonists  had  opened  their 
minds  to  new  ideas;  change  had  become 
familiar  to  them,  and  in  the  general  upheaval 
the  rights  of  the  people  were  recognized.  A 
year  later,  Jefferson  wrote  to  Franklin : 
"  With  respect  to  the  State  of  Virginia,  in 
particular,  the  people  seem  to  have  laid 
aside  the  monarchical  and  taken  up  the 
republican  government  with  as  much  ease 
as  would  have  attended  their  throwing  off 
an  old  and  putting  on  a  new  set  of  clothes." 

Jefferson's  greatness  lay  in  this,  that  he 
was  the  first  jstatesman  who  trusted  tHe  m ass 
of  the  people.  He  alone  had  divined  tne 
fact  that  they  were  competent,  morally  and 


REFORM  WORK  IN  VIRGINIA        47 

mentally,  for  self-government.  It  is  almost 
Impossible  for  us  to  appreciate  Jefferson's 
originality  in  this  respect,  because  the  bold 
and  untried  theories  for  which  he  contended 
are  now  regarded  as  commonplace  maxims. 
He  may  have  derived  his  political  ideas  in 
part  from  the  French  philosophical  writers 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  although  there  is 
no  evidence  to  that  effect ;  but  he  was  cer 
tainly  the  first  statesman  to  grasp  the  idea 
of  democracy  as  a  form  of  government,  just 
as,  at  a  later  day,  Walt  Whitman  was  the 
first  poet  to  grasp  the  idea  of  equality  as  a 
social  system.  Hamilton,  John  Adams, 
Pinckney,  Gouverneur  Morris,  even  Wash 
ington  himself,  all  believed  that  popular 
government  would  be  unsafe  and  revolu 
tionary  unless  held  in  check  by  a  strong 
executive  and  by  an  aristocratic  senate. 

Jefferson  in  his  lifetime  was  often  charged 
with  gross  inconsistency  in  his  political 
views  and  conduct ;  but  the  inconsistency 
was  more  apparent  than  real.  At  times  he 
strictly  construed,  and  at, Jamea  -  -h 


set  aside  the  Constitution ;  but  the  clue  to 


48  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

his  conduct   can   usually  be   found   in  Jhe 
fundamental  principle  that  the  onlvj)roper 


function  of  government  or  constitutions  is  to 
express  the  will  of  the  people,  and  that  the 
people  are  morally  and  mentally  competent  to 
govern.  "  I  am  sure,"  he  wrote  in  1796,  "  that 
the  mass  of  citizens  in  these  United  States 
mean  well,  and  I  firmly  believe  that  they 
will  always  act  well,  whenever  they  can  obtain 
a  right  understanding  of  matters."  And 
Jefferson's  lifelong  endeavor  was  to  enable 
the  people  to  form  this  "  right  understand 
ing"  by  educating  them.  His  ideas  of  the 
scope  of  public  education  went  far  be}^ond 
those  which  prevailed  in  his  time,  and  con 
siderably  beyond  those  which  prevail  even 
now.  For  example,  a  free  university  course 
for  the  most  apt  pupils  graduated  at  the 
grammar  schools  made  part  of  his  scheme, 
—  an  idea  most  nearly  realized  in  the  West 
ern  States  ;  and  those  States  received  their 
impetus  in  educational  matters  from  the  Or 
dinance  of  1787,  which  was  largely  the  pro 
duct  of  Jefferson's  foresight. 

O 

Happily  for  Virginia,  she  did  not  become 


REFORM  WORK  IN  VIRGINIA        49 

a  scene  of  war  until  the  year  1779,  and, 
meanwhile,  Jefferson  and  his  friends  lost  no 
time  in  remodeling  her  constitution.  There 
were  no  common  schools,  and  the  mass  of 
the  people  were  more  ignorant  and  rough 
than  their  contemporaries  in  any  other 
colony.  Elections  were  scenes  of  bribery, 
intimidation,  and  riot,  surpassing  even  those 
which  Hogarth  depicted  in  England.  Elka- 
nah  Watson,  of  Massachusetts,  describes 
what  he  saw  at  Hanover  Court  House,  Pat 
rick  Henry's  county,  in  1778  :  "  The  whole 
county  was  assembled.  The  moment  I 
alighted,  a  wretched,  pug-nosed  fellow  as 
sailed  me  to  swap  watches.  I  had  hardly 
shaken  him  off,  when  I  was  attacked  by  a 
wild  Irishman  who  insisted  on  my  swap 
ping  horses  with  him.  .  .  .  With  him  I 
came  near  being  involved  in  a  boxing- 
match,  the  Irishman  swearing,  I  '  did  not 
trate  him  like  a  jintleman.'  I  had  hardly 
escaped  this  dilemma  when  my  attention 
was  attracted  by  a  fight  between  two  very 
unwieldy  fat  men,  foaming  and  puffing  like 
two  furies,  until  one  succeeded  in  twisting 


50  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

a  forefinger  in  a  sidelock  of  the  other's 
hair,  and  in  the  act  of  thrusting  by  this 
purchase  his  thumb  into  the  latter's  eye,  he 
bawled  out,  'King's  Cruise,'  equivalent  in 
technical  language  to  '  Enough.'  " 

Quakers  were  put  in  the  pillory,  scolding 
women  were  ducked,  and  it  is  said  that  a 
woman  was  burned  to  death  in  Princess 
Anne  County  for  witchcraft.  The  English 
church,  as  we  have  seen,  was  an  established 
church ;  and  all  taxpayers,  dissenters  as 
well  as  churchmen,  were  compelled  to  con 
tribute  to  its  support.  Baptist  preachers 
were  arrested,  and  fined  as  disturbers  of 
the  peace.  The  law  of  entail,  both  as  re 
spects  land  and  slaves,  was  so  strict  that 
their  descent  to  the  eldest  son  could  not  be 
prevented  even  by  agreement  between  the 
owner  and  his  heir. 

In  his  reformation  of  the  laws,  Jefferson 
was  supported  by  Patrick  Henry,  now  gov 
ernor,  and  inhabiting  what  was  still  called 
the  palace ;  by  George  Mason,  a  patriotic 
lawyer  who  drew  the  famous  Virginia  Bill 
of  Eights  ;  by  George  Wythe,  his  old  pre- 


REFORM  WORK  IN  VIRGINIA        51 

ceptor,  and  by  James  Madison,  Jefferson's 
friend,  pupil,  and  successor,  who  in  this  year 
began  his  political  career  as  a  member  of  the 
House  of  Burgesses. 

Opposed  to  them  were  the  conservative 
party  led  by  R.  C.  Nicholas,  head  of  the 
Virginia  bar,  a  stanch  churchman  and  gen 
tleman  of  the  old  school,  and  Edward  Pen- 
dleton,  whom  Jefferson  described  as  "  full 
of  resource,  never  vanquished ;  for  if  he 
lost  the  main  battle  he  returned  upon  you, 
and  regained  so  much  of  it  as  to  make  it  a 
drawn  one,  by  dexterous  manoeuvres,  skir 
mishes  in  detail,  and  the  recovery  of  small 
advantages,  which,  little  singly,  were  impor 
tant  all  together.  You  never  knew  when 
you  were  clear  of  him." 

Intense  as  the  controversy  was,  fundamen 
tal  as  were  the  points  at  issue,  the  speakers 
never  lost  that  courtesy  for  which  the  Vir 
ginians  were  remarkable;  John  Randolph 
being  perhaps  the  only  exception.  Even 
Patrick  Henry  —  though  from  his  humble 
origin  and  impetuous  oratory  one  might 
have  expected  otherwise  —  was  never  guilty 


52  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

of  any  rudeness  to  his  opponents.  What 
Jefferson  said  of  Madison  was  true  of  the 
Virginia  orators  in  general,  —  "  soothing 
always  the  feelings  of  his  adversaries  by 
civilities  and  softnesses  of  expression." 

Jefferson  struck  first  at  the  system  o£ 
entail.  After  a  three  weeks'  struggle,  land 
and  slaves  were  put  upon  the  same  footing- 
as  all  other  property,  —  they  might  be  sold 
or  bequeathed  according  to  the  will  of  the 
possessor.  Then  came  a  longer  and  more 
bitter  contest.  Jefferson  was  for  abolishing 
all  connection  between  church  and  state,  and 
for  establishing  complete  freedom  of  religion. 
Nine  years  elapsed  before  Virginia  could  be 
brought  to  that  point;  but  at  this  session 
he  procured  a  repeal  of  the  law  which  im 
posed  penalties  for  attendance  at  a  dis 
senting  meeting-house,  and  also  of  the  law 
compelling  dissenters  to  pay  tithes.  The 
fight  was,  therefore,  substantially  won  ;  and 
in  1786,  Jefferson's  "  Act  for  establishing 
religion  "  became  the  law  of  Virginia.1 

1  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  support  of  public 
worship  was  compulsory  in  Massachusetts  —  the  inhabit- 


REFORM  WORK  IN  VIRGINIA        53 

Another  far-reaching  law  introduced  by 
Jefferson  at  this  memorable  session  of  1776 
provided  for  the  n atur  alizat  ion  of  foreigners 
in  Virginia,  after  a  .two ,  years'  residence  in 
the  StatCj  and  upon  a  declaration  of  their 
intention  to  become  American  citizens.  The 
bill  provided  also  that  the  minor  children 
of  naturalized  parents  should  be  citizens  of 
the  United  States  when  they  came  of  age. 
The  principles  of  this  measure  were  after 
ward  embodied  in  the  statutes  of  the  United 
States,  and  they  are  in  force  to-day. 

At  this  session  Jefferson  also  drew  an  act 
for  establishing  courts  of  law  in  Virginia, 
the  royal  courts  having  necessarily  passed 
out  of  existence  when  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  adopted.  Moreover,  he 
set  on  foot  a  revision  of  all  the  statutes  of 
Virginia,  a  committee  with  him  at  the  head 
being  appointed  for  this  purpose  ;  and 
finally  he  procured  the  removal  of  the  capi 
tal  from  Williamsburg  to  Richmond. 

ants  of  certain  cities  excepted  —  down  to  the  year  1833. 
An  attempt  to  free  the  people  from  this  burden,  led  by 
Dr.  Childs,  of  Berkshire  County,  was  defeated  at  the  Con 
stitutional  Convention  of  1820. 


54  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

All  this  was  accomplished,  mainly  by 
Jefferson's  efforts  ;  and  yet  the  two  bills 
upon  which  he  set  most  store  failed  entirely. 
These  were,  first,  a  comprehensive  measure 
of  state  education,  running  up  through 
primary  schools  and  grammar  schools  to  a 
state  university,  and,  secondly,  a  bill  pro 
viding  that  all  who  were  born  in  slavery 
after  the  passage  of  the  bill  should  be  free. 

This  was  Jefferson's  second  ineffectual 
attempt  to  promote  the  abolition  of  slavery. 
During  the  year  1768,  when  he  first  became 
a  member  of  the  House  of  Burgesses,  he  had 
endeavored  to  procure  the  passage  of  a  law 
enabling  slave-owners  to  free  their  slaves, 
He  induced  Colonel  Bland,  one  of  the  ablest, 
oldest,  and  most  respected  members  to  pro 
pose  the  law,  and  he  seconded  the  proposal ; 
but  it  was  overwhelmingly  rejected.  "  I,  as 
a  younger  member,"  related  Jefferson  after 
ward,  "  was  more  spared  in  the  debate  ;  but 
he  was  denounced  as  an  enemy  to  his  coun 
try,  and  was  treated  with  the  greatest  inde 
corum." 

In  1778  Jefferson  made  another  attempt: 


REFORM  WORK   IN  VIRGINIA       55 

—  he  brought  in  a  bill  forbidding  the  further 
importation  of  slaves  in  Virginia,  and  this 
was  passed  without  opposition.  Again,  in 
1784,  when  Virginia  ceded  to  the  United 
States  her  immense  northwestern  territory, 
Jefferson  drew  up  a  scheme  of  government 
for  the  States  to  be  carved  out  of  it  which 
included  a  provision  "  that  after  the  year 
1800  of  the  Christian  Era,  there  shall  be 
neither  slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude  in 
any  of  the  said  States,  otherwise  than  in 
punishment  of  crimes."  The  provision  was 
rejected  by  Congress. 

In  his  "  Notes  on  Virginia,  "  written  in  the 
year  1781,  but  published  in  1787,  he  said : 
"  The  whole  commerce  between  master  and 
slave  is  a  perpetual  exercise  of  the  most  bois 
terous  passions,  the  most  unremitting  despot 
ism,  on  the  one  part,  and  degrading  submis 
sion  on  the  other.  Our  children  see  this,  and 
learn  to  imitate  it.  ...  With  the  morals 
of  the  people  their  industry  also  is  destroyed. 
For  in  a  warm  climate  no  one  will  labor 
for  himself  who  can  make  another  labor  for 
him.  .  .  .  Indeed,  I  tremble  for  my  country 


56  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

when  I  reflect  that  God  is  just;  that  his 
justice  cannot  sleep  forever.  .  .  .  The  Al 
mighty  has  no  attribute  which  can  take  sides 
with  us  in  such  a  contest." 

When  the  Missouri  Compromise  question 
came  up,  in  1820,  Jefferson  rightly  predicted 
that  a  controversy  had  begun  which  would 
end  in  disruption ;  but  he  made  the  mistake 
of  supposing  that  the  Northern  party  were 
actuated  in  that  matter  solely  by  political 
motives.  April  22,  1820,  he  wrote  :  "  This 
momentous  question,  like  a  fire-bell  in  the 
night,  awakened  and  filled  me  with  terror. 
I  considered  it  at  once  as  the  knell  of  the 
Union.  ...  A  geographical  line,  coinciding 
with  a  marked  principle,  moral  and  political, 
once  conceived  and  held  up  to  the  angry  pas 
sions  of  men,  will  never  be  obliterated ;  and 
every  new  irritation  will  mark  it  deeper  and 
deeper.  .  .  .  The  cession  of  that  kind  of  pro 
perty,  for  so  it  is  misnamed,  is  a  bagatelle 
which  would  not  cost  me  a  second  thought 
if,  in  that  way,  a  general  emancipation  and 
expatriation  could  be  effected ;  and  gradually 
and  with  due  sacrifices  I  think  it  might  be. 


REFORM  WORK   IN  VIRGINIA       57 

But  as  it  is,  we  have  the  wolf  by  the  ears, 
and  we  can  neither  hold  him  nor  safely  let 
him  go.  Justice  is  in  one  scale,  and  self-pre 
servation  in  the  other." 

And  later,  he  wrote  of  the  Missouri  Com 
promise,  as  a  "  question  having  just  enough 
of  the  semblance  of  morality  to  throw  dust 
into  the  eyes  of  the  people.  .  .  .  The  Fed 
eralists,  unable  to  rise  again  under  the  old 
division  of  Whig  and  Tory,  have  invented  a 
geographical  division  which  gives  them  four 
teen  States  against  ten,  and  seduces  their  old 
opponents  into  a  coalition  with  them.  Real 
morality  is  on  the  other  side.  For  while  the 
removal  of  the  slaves  from  one  State  to 
another  adds  no  more  to  their  numbers  than 
their  removal  from  one  country  to  another, 
the  spreading  them  over  a  larger  surface  adds 
to  their  happiness,  and  renders  their  future 
emancipation  more  practicable." 

These  misconceptions  as  to  Northern  mo 
tives  might  be  ascribed  to  Jefferson's  ad 
vanced  age,  for,  as  he  himself  graphically 
expressed  it,  he  then  had  "  one  foot  in  the 
grave,  and  the  other  lifted  to  follow  it ;  "  but 


58  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

it  would  probably  be  more  just  to  say  that 
they  were  due,  in  part,  to  his  prejudice  against 
the  New  England  people  and  especially  the 
New  England  clergy,  and  in  part  to  the  fact 
that  his  long  retirement  in  Virginia  had  some 
what  contracted  his  views  and  sympathies. 
Jefferson  was  a  man  of  intense  local  attach 
ments,  and  he  took  color  from  his  surround 
ings.  He  never  ceased,  however,  to  regard 
slavery  as  morally  wrong  and  socially  ruin 
ous  ;  and  hi  the  brief  autobiography  which  he 
left  behind  him  he  made  these  predictions : 
"Nothing  is  more  certainly  written  in  the 
book  of  fate  than  that  these  people  are  to 
be  free.  Nor  is  it  less  certain  that  the  two 
races,  equally  free,  cannot  live  in  the  same 
government." 

History  has  justified  the  second  as  well  as 
the  first  of  these  declarations,  for,  excepting 
that  brief  period  of  anarchy  known  as  "  the 
carpet-bag  era,"  it  cannot  be  maintained  that 
the  colored  race  in  the  Southern  States  have 
been  at  any  time,  even  since  their  emancipa 
tion,  "  equally  free,"  in  the  sense  of  politically 
free,  with  their  white  fellow  citizens. 


VI 

GOVERNOR   OF  VIRGINIA 

FOR  three  years  Jefferson  was  occupied 
with  the  legislative  duties  already  described, 
and  especially  with  a  revision  of  the  Virginia 
statutes,  and  then,  in  June,  1779,  he  suc 
ceeded  Patrick  Henry  as  governor  of  the 
State.  It  has  often  been  remarked  that  he 
was,  all  through  life,  a  lucky  man,  but  in 
this  case  fortune  did  not  favor  him,  for  the 
ensuing  two  years  proved  to  be,  so  far  as 
Virginia  was  concerned,  by  much  the  worst 
period  of  the  war. 

The  French  alliance,  though  no  doubt  an 
ultimate  benefit  to  the  colonies,  had  at  first 
two  bad  effects :  it  relaxed  the  energy  of  the 
Americans,  who  trusted  that  France  would 
fight  their  battles  for  them ;  and  it  stimulated 
the  British  to  increased  exertions.  The  Brit 
ish  commissioners  announced  that  hence 
forth  England  would  employ,  in  the  prosecu- 


60  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tion  of  the  war,  all  those  agencies  which 
"  God  and  nature  had  placed  in  her  hands." 
This  meant  that  the  ferocity  of  the  Indians 
would  be  invoked,  a  matter  of  special  mo 
ment  to  Virginia,  since  her  western  frontier 
swarmed  with  Indians,  the  bravest  of  their 
race. 

The  colony,  it  must  be  remembered,  was 
then  of  immense  extent ;  for  beside  the  pre 
sent  Virginia  and  West  Virginia,  Kentucky 
and  the  greater  part  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  and 
Illinois  were  embraced  in  it.  It  stretched, 
in  short,  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean  to  the 
Mississippi  Eiver.  Upon  the  seaboard  Vir 
ginia  was  especially  vulnerable,  the  tide-water 
region  being  penetrated  by  numerous  bays 
and  rivers,  which  the  enemy's  ships  could 
easily  ascend,  for  they  were  undefended  by 
forts  or  men.  The  total  navy  of  the  colony 
was  four  vessels,  mounting  sixty-two  guns, 
and  a  few  armed  boats.  The  flower  of  the 
Virginia  soldiery,  to  the  number  of  ten  thou 
sand,  were  in  Washington's  army,  and  sup 
plies  of  men,  of  arms,  of  ammunition  and 
food  were  urgently  called  for  by  General 


GOVERNOR  OF  VIRGINIA  61 

Gates,  who  was  battling  against  Cornwallis 
in  North  Carolina.  The  militia  were  sup 
posed  to  number  fifty  thousand,  which  in 
cluded  every  man  between  sixteen  and  fifty 
years  of  age ;  but  this  was  only  one  man  for 
every  square  mile  of  territory  in  the  present 
State  of  Virginia,  and  of  these  militiamen  it 
was  estimated  that,  east  of  the  Blue  Ridge, 
only  about  one  in  five  was  armed  with  a  gun. 
The  treasury  was  practically  bankrupt,  and 
there  was  a  dearth  of  every  kind  of  warlike 
material. 

Such  was  the  situation  which  confronted, 
as  Mr  Parton  puts  it,  "  a  lawyer  of  thirty- 
six,  with  a  talent  for  music,  a  taste  for  art, 
a  love  of  science,  literature,  and  gardening." 
The  task  was  one  calling  rather  for  a  soldier 
than  a  statesman  ;  but  Mr.  Jefferson  faced  it 
with  courage,  and  on  the  whole  with  suc 
cess.  In  retaliating  the  cruel  measures  of  the 
British,  he  showed  a  firmness  which  must 
have  been  especially  difficult  for  a  man  of 
his  temperament.  He  put  in  irons  and  con 
fined  in  a  dungeon  Colonel  Henry  Hamilton 
and  two  subordinate  officers  who  had  com- 


62  THOMAS   JEFFERSON 

mitted  atrocities  upon  American  prisoners. 
He  caused  a  prison-ship,  like  the  ships  of 
infamous  memory  which  were  employed  as 
prisons  by  the  British  at  New  York,  to  be 
prepared ;  and  the  exchange  of  captives  be 
tween  Virginia  and  the  British  was  stopped. 
"  Humane  conduct  on  our  part,"  wrote  Jef 
ferson,  "was  found  to  produce  no  effect. 
The  contrary,  therefore,  is  to  be  tried.  Iron 
will  be  retaliated  by  iron,  prison-ships  for 
prison-ships,  and  like  for  like  in  general." 
But  in  November,  1779,  notice  was  received 
that  the  English,  under  their  new  leader,  Sir 
Henry  Clinton,  had  adopted  a  less  barbarous 
system  of  warfare;  and  fortunately  Jeffer 
son's  measures  of  reprisal  became  unneces 
sary. 

Hampered  as  he  was  by  want  of  men  and 
money,  Jefferson  did  all  that  he  could  to  sup 
ply  the  needs  of  the  Virginia  soldiers  with 
Washington,  of  the  army  in  North  Carolina, 
led  by  Gates,  and  of  George  Kogers  Clarke, 
the  heroic  commander  who  put  down  the 
Indian  uprising  on  the  western  frontier,  and 
captured  the  English  officer  who  instigated 


GOVERNOR  OF  VIRGINIA  63 

it,  —  that  same  Colonel  Hamilton  of  whom 
mention  has  already  been  made.  The  story 
of  Clarke's  adventures  in  the  wilderness,  — 
he  was  a  neighbor  of  Jefferson,  only  twenty- 
six  years  old,  —  of  his  forced  marches,  of 
his  masterful  dealing  with  the  Indians,  and 
finally  of  his  capture  of  the  British  force, 
forms  a  thrilling  chapter  in  the  history  of  the 
American  Revolution. 

Many  indeed  of  Jefferson's  constituents 
censured  him  as  being  over-zealous  in  his 
support  of  the  army  of  Gates.  He  stripped 
Virginia,  they  said,  of  troops  and  resources 
which,  as  it  proved  afterward,  were  needed 
at  home.  But  if  Cornwallis  were  not  de 
feated  in  North  Carolina,  it  was  certain  that 
he  would  overrun  the  much  more  exposed 
Virginia.  If  he  could  be  defeated  anywhere, 
it  would  be  in  the  Carolinas.  Jefferson's 
course,  it  is  sufficient  to  say,  was  that  recom 
mended  by  Washington  ;  and  his  exertions 
in  behalf  of  the  Continental  armies  were 
commended  in  the  highest  terms  not  only  by 
"Washington,  but  also  by  Generals  Gates, 
Greene,  Steuben,  and  Lafayette.  The  mili- 


64  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

tia  were  called  out,  leaving  behind  only  so 
many  men  as  were  required  to  cultivate  the 
land,  wagons  were  impressed,  including  two 
belonging  to  the  governor,  and  attempts  were 
even  made  —  extraordinary  for  Virginia  — 
to  manufacture  certain  much-needed  articles. 
"  Our  smiths,"  wrote  Jefferson,  "  are  making 
five  hundred  axes  and  some  tomahawks  for 
General  Gates." 

Thus  fared  the  year  1779,  and  in  1780 
things  went  from  bad  to  worse.  In  April 
came  a  letter  from  Madison,  saying  that 
Washington's  army  was  on  the  verge  of 
dissolution,  being  only  half-clothed,  and  in  a 
way  to  be  starved.  The  public  treasury  was 
empty  and  the  public  credit  gone.  In  Au 
gust  occurred  the  disastrous  defeat  of  General 
Gates  at  Gamden,  which  left  Virginia  at  the 
mercy  of  Cornwallis.  In  October  a  British 
fleet  under  Leslie  ravaged  the  country  about 
Portsmouth,  but  failing  to  effect  a  juncture 
with  Cornwallis,  who  was  detained  in  North 
Carolina  by  illness  among  his  troops,  did  no 
further  harm.  Two  months  later,  however, 
Benedict  Arnold  sailed  up  the  James  River 


GOVERNOR  OF  VIRGINIA  65 

with  another  fleet,  and,  after  committing 
some  depredations  at  Richmond,  sailed  down 
again,  escaping  by  the  aid  of  a  favorable 
wind,  which  hauled  from  east  to  west  just 
in  the  nick  of  time  for  him. 

In  June,  1781,  Cornwallis  invaded  Vir 
ginia,  and  no  one  suffered  more  than  Jef 
ferson  from  his  depredations.  Tarleton  was 
dispatched  to  seize  the  governor  at  Monti- 
cello  ;  but  the  latter  was  forewarned  by  a 
citizen  of  Charlotteville,  who,  being  in  a 
tavern  at  Louisa  when  Tarleton  and  his 
troop  swept  by  on  the  main  road,  immedi 
ately  guessed  their  destination,  and  mount 
ing  his  horse,  a  fleet  Virginia  thoroughbred, 
rode  by  a  short  cut  through  the  woods 
straight  to  Monticello,  arriving  there  about 
three  hours  ahead  of  Tarleton. 

Jefferson  took  the  matter  coolly.  He 
first  dispatched  his  family  to  a  place  of 
safety,  sent  his  best  horse  to  be  shod  at  a 
neighboring  smithy,  and  then  proceeded  to 
sort  and  separate  his  papers.  He  left  the 
house  only  about  five  minutes  before  the 
soldiers  entered  it. 


66  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Two  slaves,  Martin,  Mr.  Jefferson's  body 
servant,  and  Caesar,  were  engaged  in  hid 
ing  plate  and  other  articles  under  the  floor 
of  the  portico,  a  single  plank  having  been 
raised  for  that  purpose.  As  Martin,  above, 
handed  the  last  article  to  Ca3sar  under  the 
floor,  the  tramp  of  the  approaching  cavalry 
was  heard.  Down  went  the  plank,  shutting 
in  Caesar,  and  there  he  remained,  without 
making  any  outcry,  for  eighteen  hours,  in 
darkness,  and  of  course  without  food  or 
water.  One  of  the  soldiers,  to  try  Martin's 
nerve,  clapped  a  pistol  to  his  breast,  and 
threatened  to  fire  unless  he  would  tell  which 
way  his  master  had  fled.  "Fire  away, 
then,"  retorted  the  black,  fiercely  answering 
glance  for  glance,  and  not  receding  a  hair's 
breath. 

Tarleton  and  his  men  scrupulously  re 
frained  from  injuring  Jefferson's  property. 
Cornwallis,  on  the  other  hand,  who  encamped 
on  Jefferson's  estate  of  Elk  Hill,  lying  oppo 
site  Elk  Island  in  the  James  River,  destroyed 
the  growing  crops,  burned  all  the  barns  and 
fences,  carried  off  —  "as  was  to  be  expected," 


GOVERNOR  OF  VIRGINIA  67 

said  Mr.  Jefferson  —  the  cattle  and  horses, 
and  committed  the  barbarity  of  killing  the 
colts  that  were  too  young  to  be  of  service. 
He  carried  off,  also,  about  thirty  slaves. 
"  Had  this  been  to  give  them  freedom," 
wrote  Jefferson,  "  he  would  have  done  right ; 
but  it  was  to  consign  them  to  inevitable 
death  from  the  smallpox  and  putrid  fever, 
then  raging  in  his  camp." 

"  Some  of  the  miserable  wretches  crawled 
home  to  die,"  Mr.  Eandall  relates,  "  and 
giving  information  where  others  lay  perishing 
in  hovels  or  in  the  open  air,  by  the  wayside, 
these  were  sent  for  by  their  generous  master ; 
and  the  last  moments  of  all  of  them  were 
made  as  comfortable  as  could  be  done  by 
proper  nursing  and  medical  attendance." 

These  dreadful  scenes,  added  to  the  agita 
tion  of  having  twice  been  obliged,  at  a  mo 
ment's  notice,  to  flee  from  the  enemy,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  anxieties  which  she  must  have 
endured  on  her  husband's  account,  were  too 
much  for  Mrs.  Jefferson's  already  enfeebled 
constitution.  She  died  on  September  6, 
1782. 


68  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Six  slave  women  who  were  household  ser 
vants  enjoyed  for  thirty  years  a  kind  of 
humble  distinction  at  Monticello  as  "  the 
servants  who  were  in  the  room  when  Mrs. 
Jefferson  died ; "  and  the  fact  that  they 
were  there  attests  the  affectionate  relations 
which  must  have  existed  between  them  and 
their  master  and  mistress.  "  They  have 
often  told  my  wife,"  relates  Mr.  Bacon, 
"  that  when  Mrs.  Jefferson  died  they  stood 
around  the  bed.  Mr.  Jefferson  sat  by  her, 
and  she  gave  him  directions  about  a  good 
many  things  that  she  wanted  done.  When 
she  came  to  the  children,  she  wept,  and  could 
not  speak  for  some  time.  Finally  she  held 
up  her  hand,  and,  spreading  out  her  four 
fingers,  she  told  him  she  could  not  die  happy 
if  she  thought  her  four  children  were  ever  to 
have  a  stepmother  brought  in  over  them. 
Holding  her  other  hand  in  his,  Mr.  Jeffer 
son  promised  her  solemnly  that  he  would 
never  marry  again  ;  "  and  the  promise  was 
kept. 

After  his  wife's  death  Jefferson  sank  into 
what  he  afterward  described  as  "  a  stupor  of 


GOVERNOR  OF  VIRGINIA  69 

mind ; "  and  even  before  that  he  had  been, 
for  the  first  and  last  time  in  his  life,  in  a 
somewhat  morbid  mental  condition.    He  was 
an  excessively  sensitive  man,  and  reflections 
upon  his   conduct  as   governor,  during  the 
raids  into  Virginia  by  Arnold  and  Cornwallis, 
coming  at  a  time  when  he  was  overwrought, 
rankled  in  his  mind.     He  refused  to  serve 
again   as  governor,  and  desiring  to  defend 
his    course   when    in   that  office,  became  a 
member  of  the  House  of  Burgesses  in  1781, 
in  order  that  he  might  answer  his   critics 
there ;  but  not  a  voice  was  raised  against 
him.     In  1782,  he  was  again  elected  to  the 
House,  but  he  did   not   attend  ;  and   both 
Madison  and  Monroe  endeavored  in  vain  to 
draw  him  from  his  seclusion.     To  Monroe 
he  replied  :  "  Before  I  ventured  to  declare 
to  my  countrymen  my  determination  to  re 
tire  from  public   employment,  I    examined 
well   my   heart   to   know   whether  it  were 
thoroughly  cured  of  every  principle  of  polit 
ical  ambition,  whether  no  lurking  particle 
remained  which  might  leave  me  uneasy,  when 
reduced  within   the  limits  of  mere  private 


70  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

life.     I  became  satisfied  that  every  fibre  of 
that  passion  was  thoroughly  eradicated." 

Jefferson  was  an  impulsive  man,  —  in 
some  respects  a  creature  of  the  moment ; 
certainly  often,  in  his  own  case,  mistaking, 
as  a  permanent  feeling,  what  was  really  a 
transitory  impression.  His  language  to 
Monroe  must,  therefore,  be  taken  as  the 
sincere  deliverance  of  a  man  who,  at  that 
time,  had  not  the  remotest  expectation  of 
receiving,  or  the  least  ambition  to  attain, 
the  highest  offices  in  the  gift  of  the  Ameri 
can  people. 


VII 

ENVOY   AT   PAEIS 

Two  years  after  his  wife's  death,  namely, 
in  1784,  Jefferson  was  chosen  by  Congress 
to  serve  as  envoy  at  Paris,  with  John  Adams 
and  Benjamin  Franklin.  The  appointment 
came  at  an  opportune  moment,  when  his 
mind  was  beginning  to  recover  its  tone,  and 
he  gladly  accepted  it.  It  was  deemed  neces 
sary  that  the  new  Confederacy  should  make 
treaties  with  the  various  governments  of 
Europe,  and  as  soon  as  the  envoys  reached 
Paris,  they  drew  up  a  treaty  such  as  they 
hoped  might  be  negotiated.  It  has  been 
described  as  "  the  first  serious  attempt  ever 
made  to  conduct  the  intercourse  of  nations 
on  Christian  principles  ; "  and,  on  that  ac 
count,  it  failed.  To  this  failure  there  was, 
however,  one  exception.  "  Old  Frederick  of 
Prussia,"  as  Jefferson  styled  him,  "  met  us 


72  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

cordially ;  "  and  with  him  a  treaty  was  soon 
concluded. 

In  May,  1785,  Franklin  returned  to  the 
United  States,  and  Jefferson  was  appointed 
minister.  "  You  replace  Dr.  Franklin," 
said  the  Count  of  Vergennes  when  Jefferson 
announced  his  appointment.  "  I  succeed,  — 
no  one  can  replace  him,"  was  the  reply. 

Jefferson's  residence  in  Paris  at  this  criti 
cal  period  was  a  fortunate  occurrence.  It 
would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  he  de 
rived  his  political  principles  from  France : 
—  he  carried  them  there ;  but  he  was  con 
firmed  in  them  by  witnessing  the  injustice 
and  misery  which  resulted  to  the  common 
people  from  the  monarchical  governments  of 
Europe.  To  James  Monroe  he  wrote  in 
June,  1785  :  "  The  pleasure  of  the  trip  [to 
Europe]  will  be  less  than  you  expect,  but 
the  utility  greater.  It  will  make  you  adore 
your  own  country,  —  its  soil,  its  climate,  its 
equality,  laws,  people,  and  manners.  My 
God  !  how  little  do  my  countrymen  know 
what  precious  blessings  they  are  in  posses 
sion  of  and  which  no  other  people  on  earth 


ENVOY  AT    PARIS  73 

enjoy  !     I  confess  I  had  no  idea  of  it  my 
self." 

To  George  Wythe  he  wrote  in  August, 
1786 :  "  Preach,  my  dear  sir,  a  crusade 
against  ignorance;  establish  and  improve 
the  law  for  educating  the  common  people. 
Let  our  countrymen  know  that  the  people 
alone  can  protect  us  against  these  evils  ;  and 
that  the  tax  which  will  be  paid  for  this  pur 
pose  is  not  more  than  the  thousandth  part 
of  what  will  be  paid  to  kings,  priests,  and 
nobles,  who  will  rise  up  among  us  if  we 
leave  the  people  in  ignorance."  To  Madi 
son,  he  wrote  in  January,  1787  :  "  This  is  a 
goverment  of  wolves  over  sheep."  Jefferson 
took  the  greatest  pains  to  ascertain  the  con 
dition  of  the  laboring  classes.  In  the  course 
of  a  journey  in  the  south  of  France,  he  wrote 
to  Lafayette,  begging  him  to  survey  the  con 
dition  of  the  people  for  himself.  "To  do 
it  most  effectually,"  he  said,  "  you  must  be 
absolutely  incognito;  you  must  ferret  the 
people  out  of  their  hovels,  as  I  have  done ; 
look  into  their  kettles ;  eat  their  bread ;  loll 
on  their  beds  on  pretense  of  resting  your- 


74  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

self,  but  in  fact  to  find  if  they  are  soft. 
You  will  feel  a  sublime  pleasure  in  the 
course  of  the  investigation,  and  a  sublimer 
one  hereafter,  when  you  shall  be  able  to 
apply  your  knowledge  to  the  softening  of 
their  beds,  or  the  throwing  a  morsel  of  meat 
into  their  kettle  of  vegetables." 

These  excursions  among  the  French  pea 
santry,  who,  as  Jefferson  well  knew,  were  ruin 
ously  taxed  in  order  to  support  an  extrava 
gant  court  and  an  idle  and  insolent  nobility, 
made  him  a  fierce  Republican.  "  There  is 
not  a  crowned  head  in  Europe,"  he  wrote  to 
General  Washington,  in  1788,  "whose  tal 
ents  or  merits  would  entitle  him  to  be  elected 
a  vestryman  by  the  people  of  America." 

But  for  the  French  race  Jefferson  had  an 
affinity.  He  was  glad  to  live  with  people 
among  whom,  as  he  said,  "  a  man  might  pass 
a  life  without  encountering  a  single  rude 
ness."  He  liked  their  polished  manners  and 
gay  disposition,  their  aptitude  for  science,  for 
philosophy,  and  for  art;  even  their  wines 
and  cookery  suited  his  taste,  and  his  prefer 
ence  in  this  respect  was  so  well  known  that 


ENVOY  AT  PARIS  75 

Patrick  Henry  once  humorously  stigmatized 
him  as  "  a  man  who  had  abjured  his  native 
victuals." 

Jefferson's  stay  in  Paris  corresponded 
exactly  with  the  "glorious"  period  of  the 
French  Revolution.  He  was  present  at  the 
Assembly  of  the  Notables  in  1787,  and  he 
witnessed  the  destruction  of  the  Bastille  in 
1789. 

"  The  change  in  this  country,"  he  wrote 
in  March,  1789,  "is  such  as  you  can  form 
no  idea  of.  The  frivolities  of  conversation 
have  given  way  entirely  to  politics.  Men, 
women,  and  children  talk  nothing  else.  .  .  . 
and  mode  has  acted  a  wonderful  part  in  the 
present  instance.  All  the  handsome  young 
women,  for  example,  are  for  the  tiers  etat,  and 
this  is  an  army  more  powerful  in  France 
than  the  200,000  men  of  the  king." 

The  truth  is  that  an  intellectual  and 
moral  revolution  preceded  in  France  the 
outbreak  of  the  populace.  There  was  an 
interior  conviction  that  the  government  of 
the  country  was  excessively  unjust  and  op 
pressive.  A  love  of  liberty,  a  feeling  of 


76  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

fraternity,  a  passion  for  equality  moved  the 
intellect  and  even  the  aristocracy  of  France. 
In  this  crisis  the  reformers  looked  toward 
America,  for  the  United  States  had  just 
trodden  the  path  upon  which  France  was 
entering.  "  Our  proceedings,"  wrote  Jef 
ferson  to  Madison  in  1789,  "have  been 
viewed  as  a  model  for  them  on  every  occa 
sion.  .  .  .  Our  [authority]  has  been  treated 
like  that  of  the  Bible,  open  to  explanation, 
but  not  to  question." 

Jefferson's  advice  was  continually  sought 
by  Lafayette  and  others;  and  his  house, 
maintained  in  the  easy,  liberal  style  of  Vir 
ginia,  was  a  meeting  place  for  the  Revolu 
tionary  statesmen.  Jefferson  dined  at  three 
or  four  o'clock ;  and  after  the  cloth  had  been 
removed  he  and  his  guests  sat  over  their 
wine  till  nine  or  ten  in  the  evening. 

In  July,  1789,  the  National  Assembly 
appointed  a  committee  to  draught  a  consti 
tution,  and  the  committee  formally  invited 
the  American  minister  to  assist  at  their  ses 
sions  and  favor  them  with  his  advice.  This 
function  he  felt  obliged  to  decline,  as  being 


ENVOY  AT  PARIS  77 

inconsistent  with  his  post  of  minister  to  the 
king.  No  man  had  a  nicer  sense  of  pro 
priety  than  Jefferson ;  and  he  punctiliously 
observed  the  requirements  of  his  somewhat 
difficult  situation  in  Paris. 

What  gave  Mr.  Jefferson  the  greatest 
anxiety  and  trouble,  was  our  relations  with 
the  piratical  Barbary  powers  who  held  the 
keys  of  the  Mediterranean  and  sometimes 
extended  their  depredations  even  into  the 
Atlantic.  It  was  a  question  of  paying  trib 
ute  or  going  to  war ;  and  most  of  the  Euro 
pean  powers  paid  tribute.  In  1784,  for 
example,  the  Dutch  contributed  to  "the 
high,  glorious,  mighty,  and  most  noble, 
King,  Prince,  and  Emperor  of  Morocco," 
a  mass  of  material  which  included  thirty 
cables,  seventy  cannon,  sixty-nine  masts, 
twenty-one  anchors,  fifty  dozen  sail-needles, 
twenty-four  tons  of  pitch,  two  hundred  and 
eighty  loaves  of  sugar,  twenty-four  China 
punch-bowls,  three  clocks,  and  one  "very 
large  watch." 

Jefferson  ascertained  that  the  pirates 
would  require  of  the  United  States,  as  the 


78  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

price  of  immunity  for  its  commerce,  a  trib 
ute  of  about  three  hundred  thousand  dollars 
per  annum.  "  Surely,"  he  wrote  home,  "  our 
people  will  not  give  this.  Would  it  not  be 
better  to  offer  them  an  equal  treaty?  If 
they  refuse,  why  not  go  to  war  with  them  ?  " 
And  he  pressed  upon  Mr.  Jay,  who  held  the 
secretaryship  of  foreign  affairs,  as  the  office 
was  then  called,  the  immediate  establishment 
of  a  navy.  But  Congress  would  do  nothing  ; 
and  it  was  not  till  Jefferson  himself  became 
President  that  the  Barbary  pirates  were  dealt 
with  in  a  wholesome  and  stringent  manner. 
During  the  whole  term  of  his  residence  at 
Paris  he  was  negotiating  with  the  Mediterra 
nean  powers  for  the  release  of  unfortunate 
Americans,  many  of  whom  spent  the  best 
part  of  their  lives  in  horrible  captivity. 

Mr.  Jefferson's  self-imposed  duties  were 
no  less  arduous.  He  kept  four  colleges  in 
formed  of  the  most  valuable  new  inventions, 
discoveries,  and  books.  He  had  a  Yankee 
talent  for  mechanical  improvements,  and  he 
was  always  on  the  alert  to  obtain  anything 
of  this  nature  which  he  thought  might  be 


ENVOY   AT  PARIS  79 

useful  at  home.  Jefferson  himself,  by  the 
way,  invented  the  revolving  armchair,  the 
buggy-top,  and  a  mould  board  for  a  plough. 
He  bought  books  for  Franklin,  Madison, 
Monroe,  Wythe,  and  himself.  He  informed 
one  correspondent  about  Watt's  engine,  an 
other  about  the  new  system  of  canals.  He 
smuggled  rice  from  Turin  in  his  coat  pock 
ets  ;  and  he  was  continually  dispatching  to 
agricultural  societies  in  America  seeds,  roots, 
nuts,  and  plants.  Houdin  was  sent  over  by 
him  to  make  the  statue  of  Washington; 
and  he  forwarded  designs  for  the  new  capi- 
tol  at  Richmond.  For  Buffon  he  procured 
the  skin  of  an  American  panther,  and  also 
the  bones  and  hide  of  a  New  Hampshire 
moose,  to  obtain  which  Governor  Sullivan 
of  that  State  organized  a  hunting-party  in 
the  depth  of  winter  and  cut  a  road  through 
the  forest  for  twenty  miles  in  order  to  bring 
out  his  quarry. 

Jefferson  was  the  most  indefatigable  of 
men,  and  he  did  not  relax  in  Paris.  He 
had  rooms  at  a  Carthusian  monastery  to 
which  he  repaired  when  he  had  some  special 


80  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

work  on  hand.  He  kept  a  carriage  and 
horses,  but  could  not  afford  a  saddle  horse. 
Instead  of  riding,  he  took  a  walk  every 
afternoon,  usually  of  six  or  seven  miles,  oc 
casionally  twice  as  long.  It  was  while  re 
turning  with  a  friend  from  one  of  these 
excursions  that  he  fell  and  fractured  his 
right  wrist ;  and  the  fracture  was  set  so  im 
perfectly  that  it  troubled  him  ever  after 
ward.  It  was  characteristic  of  Jefferson 
that  he  said  nothing  to  his  friend  as  to  the 
injury  until  they  reached  home,  though  his 
suffering  from  it  was  great ;  and,  also,  that 
he  at  once  began  to  write  with  the  other 
hand,  making  numerous  entries,  on  the  very 
night  of  the  accident,  in  a  writing  which, 
though  stiff,  was,  and  remains,  perfectly 
clear. 

Mr.  Jefferson's  two  daughters  had  been 
placed  at  a  convent  school  near  Paris,  and 
he  was  surprised  one  day  to  receive  a  note 
from  Martha,  the  elder,  asking  his  permis 
sion  to  remain  in  the  convent  for  the  rest 
of  her  life  as  a  nun.  For  a  day  or  two  she 
received  no  answer.  Then  her  father  called 


ENVOY  AT  PARIS  81 

in  his  carriage,  and  after  a  short  interview 
with  the  abbess  took  his  daughters  away ; 
and  thenceforth  Martha  presided,  so  far  as 
her  age  permitted,  over  her  father's  house 
hold.  Not  a  word  upon  the  subject  of  her 
request  ever  passed  between  them ;  and  long 
afterward,  in  telling  the  story  to  her  own 
children,  she  praised  Mr.  Jefferson's  tact  in 
dealing  with  what  she  described  as  a  tran 
sient  impulse. 

After  this  incident,  Jefferson,  thinking 
that  it  was  time  to  take  his  daughters  home, 
obtained  leave  of  absence  for  six  months ; 
and  the  little  family  landed  at  Norfolk,  No 
vember  18,  1789.  They  journeyed  slowly 
homeward,  stopping  at  one  friend's  house 
after  another,  and,  two  days  before  Christ 
mas,  arrived  at  Monticello,  where  they  were 
rapturously  greeted  by  the  slaves,  who  took 
the  four  horses  from  the  carriage  and  drew 
it  up  the  steep  incline  themselves;  and 
when  he  alighted,  Mr.  Jefferson,  in  spite  of 
himself,  was  carried  into  the  house  on  the 
arms  of  his  black  servants  and  friends. 


VIII 

SECRETARY   OF   STATE 

MR.  JEFFERSON  had  a  strong  desire  to 
resume  his  post  as  minister  to  France,  but 
he  yielded  to  Washington's  earnest  request 
that  he  should  become  Secretary  of  State  in 
the  new  government.  He  lingered  long 
enough  at  Monticello  to  witness  the  mar 
riage  of  his  daughter  Martha  to  Thomas 
Mann  Kandolph,  and  then  set  out  upon  a 
cold,  wet  journey  of  twenty-one  days,  reach 
ing  New  York,  which  was  then  the  seat  of 
government,  late  in  March,  1790.  He  hired 
a  small  house  at  No.  57  Maiden  Lane,  and 
immediately  attacked  the  arrears  of  work 
which  had  been  accumulating  for  six  months. 
The  unusual  confinement,  aggravated,  per 
haps,  by  a  homesickness,  clearly  revealed  in 
his  letters,  for  his  daughters  and  for  Monti- 
cello,  brought  on  what  seems  to  have  been  a 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE  83 

neuralgic  headache  which  lasted  for  three 
weeks.  It  may  have  been  caused  in  part 
by  the  climate  of  New  York,  as  to  which 
Mr.  Jefferson  observed  :  "  Spring  and  fall 
they  never  have,  so  far  as  I  can  learn.  They 
have  ten  months  of  winter,  two  of  summer, 
with  some  winter  days  interspersed."  But 
there  were  other  causes  beside  homesickness 
and  headache  which  made  Jefferson  unhappy 
in  his  new  position.  Long  afterward  he 
described  them  as  follows  :  — 

"I  had  left  France  in  the  first  year  of 
her  Revolution,  in  the  fervor  of  natural 
rights  and  zeal  for  reformation.  My  con 
scientious  devotion  to  those  rights  could  not 
be  heightened,  but  it  had  been  aroused  and 
excited  by  daily  exercise.  The  President 
received  me  cordially,  and  my  colleagues 
and  the  circle  of  principal  citizens  apparently 
with  welcome.  The  courtesies  of  dinners 
given  to  me,  as  a  stranger  newly  arrived 
among  them,  placed  me  at  once  in  their  fa 
miliar  society.  But  I  cannot  describe  the 
wonder  and  mortification  with  which  the 
table  conversations  filled  me.  Politics  were 


84  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

the  chief  topic,  and  a  preference  of  kingly 
over  republican  government  was  evidently 
the  favorite  sentiment.  An  apostate  I 
could  not  be,  nor  yet  a  hypocrite;  and  I 
found  myself  for  the  most  part  the  only  ad 
vocate  on  the  republican  side  of  the  ques 
tion,  unless  among  the  guests  there  chanced 
to  be  some  member  of  that  party  from  the 
legislative  houses." 

It  must  be  remembered  that  Jefferson's 
absence  in  France  had  been  the  period  of 
the  Confederacy,  when  the  inability  of  Con 
gress  to  enforce  its  laws  and  to  control  the 
States  was  so  evident  and  so  disastrous  that 
the  need  of  a  stronger  central  government 
had  been  impressed  on  men's  minds.  The 
new  Constitution  had  been  devised  to  supply 
that  need,  but  it  was  elastic  in  its  terms,  and 
it  avoided  all  details.  Should  it  be  construed 
in  an  aristocratic  or  in  a  democratic  spirit, 
and  should  the  new  nation  be  given  an  aris 
tocratic  or  a  democratic  twist  ?  This  was  a 
burning  question,  and  it  gave  rise  to  that 
long  struggle  led  by  Hamilton  on  one  side 
and  by  Jefferson  on  the  other,  which  ended 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE  85 

with  the  election  of  Jefferson  as  President 
in  the  year  1800. 

Hamilton  and  his  party  utterly  disbelieved 
in  government  by  the  people.1  John  Adams 
declared  that  the  English  Constitution,  bar 
ring  its  element  of  corruption,  was  an  ideal 
constitution.  Hamilton  went  farther  and 
asserted  that  the  English  form  of  govern 
ment,  corruption  and  all,  was  the  best  prac 
ticable  form.  An  aristocratic  senate,  chosen 
for  a  long  term,  if  not  for  life,  was  thought 
to  be  essential  even  by  Mr.  Adams.  Ham 
ilton's  notion  was  that  mankind  were  inca 
pable  of  self-government,  and  must  be  gov 
erned  in  one  or  two  ways,  —  by  force  or  by 
fraud.  Property  was,  in  his  view,  the  ideal 
basis  of  government ;  and  he  was  inclined  to 
fix  the  possession  of  "a  thousand  Spanish 
dollars  "  as  the  proper  qualification  for  a 
voter. 

The  difference  between  the  Hamiltonian 
and  the  Jeffersonian  view  arises  chiefly  from 

1  The  father  of  Miss  Catherine  Sedgwick  was  a  lead 
ing  Federalist,  and  his  daughter  records  that,  though  a 
most  kind-hearted  man,  he  habitually  spoke  of  the  peo 
ple  as  "  Jacobins"  and  "  miscreants." 


86  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

a  different  belief  as  to  the  connection  between 
education  and  morality.  All  aristocratic  sys 
tems  must,  in  the  last  analysis,  be  founded 
either  upon  brute  force  or  else  upon  the 
assumption  that  education  and  morality  go 
hand-in-hand,  and  that  the  well-to-do  and 
best  educated  class  is  morally  superior  to  the 
less  educated.  Jefferson  rejected  this  as 
sumption,  and  all  real  believers  in  democracy 
must  take  their  stand  with  him.  He  once 
stated  his  creed  upon  this  point  in  a  letter  as 
follows :  - 

"The  moral  sense  or  conscience  is  as 
much  a  part  of  man  as  his  leg  or  arm.  .  .  . 
It  may  be  strengthened  by  exercise,  as  may 
any  particular  limb  of  the  body.  This  sense 
is  submitted,  indeed,  in  some  degree  to  the 
guidance  of  reason,  but  it  is  a  small  stock 
which  is  required  for  this,  even  a  less  one 
than  what  we  call  common  sense.  State  a 
moral  case  to  a  ploughman  and  a  professor. 
The  former  will  decide  it  as  well  and  often 
better  than  the  latter,  because  he  has  not 
been  led  astray  by  artificial  rules." 

This  is  sound  philosophy.     The  great  prob- 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE  87 

lems  in  government,  whether  they  relate  to 
matters  external  or  internal,  are  moral,  not 
intellectual.  There  are,  indeed,  purely  in 
tellectual  problems,  such  as  the  question  be 
tween  free  silver  and  a  gold  standard ;  and  as 
to  these  problems,  the  people  may  go  wrong. 
But  they  are  not  vital.  No  nation  ever  yet 
achieved  glory  or  incurred  destruction  by  tak 
ing  one  course  rather  than  another  in  a  matter 
of  trade  or  finance.  The  crucial  questions 
are  moral  questions,  and  experience  has 
shown  that  as  to  such  matters  the  people 
can  be  trusted.  As  Jefferson  himself  said, 
"  The  will  of  the  majority,  the  natural  law 
of  every  society,  is  the  only  sure  guardian  of 
the  rights  of  man.  Perhaps  even  this  may 
sometimes  err ;  but  its  errors  are  honest,  soli 
tary,  and  short-lived." 

Washington's  cabinet  was  made  up  on  the 
theory  that  it  should  represent  not  the  party 
in  power,  but  both  parties,  —  for  two  parties 
already  existed,  the  Federalists  and  the  anti- 
Federalists,  who,  under  Jefferson's  influence, 
soon  became  known  by  the  better  name  of 
Eepublicans.  The  cabinet  consisted  of  four 


88  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

members,  Jefferson,  Secretary  of  State,  Ham 
ilton,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Henry  Knox, 
Secretary  of  War,  and  Edmund  Randolph, 
Attorney-General. 

Knox  sided  almost  always  with  Hamilton, 
and  Randolph  was  an  inconstant  supporter 
of  Jefferson.  Though  an  able  and  learned 
man,  he  was  given  to  hair-splitting  and  hesi 
tation,  and,  in  allusion  to  his  habit  of  arguing 
on  one  side,  but  finally  voting  upon  the  other, 
Jefferson  once  remarked  that  he  usually  gave 
the  shell  to  his  friends,  and  reserved  the 
oyster  for  his  opponents. 

The  political  opinions  of  Jefferson  and 
Hamilton  were  so  diametrically  opposed  that 
the  cabinet  was  soon  torn  by  dissension. 
Hamilton  was  for  a  strong  government,  for 
surrounding  the  President  with  pomp  and 
etiquette,  for  a  central  authority  as  against 
the  authority  of  the  States.  In  pursuance  of 
these  ideas,  he  brought  forward  his  famous 
measures  for  assumption  of  the  state  debts 
by  the  national  government,  for  the  funding 
of  the  national  debt,  and  finally  for  the  crea 
tion  of  a  national  bank.  Jefferson  opposed 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE  89 

these  measures,  and,  although  the  assumption 
and  the  funding  laws  had  grave  faults,  and 
led  to  speculation,  and  in  the  case  of  many 
persons  to  financial  ruin,  yet  it  must  be  admit 
ted  that  Jefferson  never  appreciated  their 
merits. 

The  truth  is  that  both  Hamilton  and  Jef 
ferson  were  essential  to  the  development  of 
this  country ;  and  the  principles  of  each  have 
been  adopted  in  part,  and  rejected  in  part. 
Hamilton's  conception  of  a  central  govern 
ment  predominating  over  the  state  govern 
ments  has  been  realized,  though  not  nearly 
to  the  extent  to  which  he  would  have  carried 
it.  On  the  other  hand,  his  various  schemes 
for  making  the  government  into  an  aristo 
cracy  instead  of  a  democracy  have  all  been 
abandoned,  or,  like  the  Electoral  College, 
turned  to  a  use  the  opposite  of  what  he  in 
tended.  So,  Jefferson's  view  of  state  rights 
has  not  strictly  been  maintained ;  but  his 
fundamental  principles  of  popular  govern 
ment  and  popular  education  have  made  the 
United  States  what  it  is,  and  are  destined, 
we  hope,  when  fully  developed,  to  make  it 
something  better  yet. 


90  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

No  less  an  authority  than  that  of  Wash 
ington,  who  appreciated  the  merits  of  both 
men,  could  have  kept  the  peace  between 
them.  Hamilton  under  an  assumed  name 
attacked  Jefferson  in  the  public  prints.  Jef 
ferson  never  published  a  line  unsigned ;  but 
he  permitted  Philip  Freneau,  who  had  slight 
employment  as  a  translator  in  his  depart 
ment,  and  the  trifling  salary  of  8250  a  year, 
to  wage  war  against  Hamilton  in  the  gazette 
which  Freneau  published ;  and  he  even  stood 
by  while  Freneau  attacked  Washington. 
Washington  indeed  once  gave  Jefferson  a 
hint  on  this  subject,  which  the  latter  refused 
to  take.  "  He  was  evidently  sore  and  warm," 
wrote  Jefferson,  "  and  I  took  his  intention  to 
be  that  I  should  interfere  in  some  way  with 
Freneau,  perhaps  withdraw  his  appointment 
of  translating  clerk  to  my  office.  But  I  will 
not  do  it.  His  paper  has  saved  our  consti 
tution,  which  was  galloping  fast  into  monar 
chy.  .  .  .  And  the  President  has  not,  .  .  . 
with  his  usual  good  sense  and  sang  froid, 
.  .  .  seen  that,  though  some  bad  things  had 
passed  through  it  to  the  public,  yet  the  good 
have  predominated  immensely," 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE  91 

In  the  spring  of  1792,  Jefferson,  who  had 
now  been  two  years  in  office,  was  extremely 
anxious  to  retire,  not  only  because  his  sit 
uation  at  Washington  was  unpleasant,  but 
because  his  affairs  at  home  had  been  so  neg 
lected  during  his  long  absences  that  he  was 
in   danger  of   bankruptcy.     His  estate  was 
large,  but  it  was  incumbered  by  a  debt  to 
English  creditors  of  113,000.     Some  years 
before  he   had  sold  for  cash  a  farm  near 
Monticello  in  order  to  discharge  this  debt ; 
but  at  that  time  the  Revolutionary  war  had 
begun,  and  the  Virginia  legislature  passed 
an  act  inviting  all  men  owing  money  to  Eng 
lish  creditors  to  deposit  the  same  in  the  state 
treasury,  the  State  agreeing  to  pay  it  over  to 
the  English  creditors  after  the  war.     Jeffer 
son  accordingly  deposited  the  $13,000  in  gold 
which  he  had  just  received.    Later,  however, 
this  law  was  rescinded,  and  the  money  re 
ceived  under  it  was  paid  back,  not  in  gold, 
but  in  paper  money  of  the  State,  which  was 
then  so  depreciated  as  to  be  almost  worth 
less.     In  riding  by  the  farm  thus  disposed 
of,  Jefferson  in  after  years  would  sometimes 


92  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

point  to  it  and  say :  "  That  farm  I  once  sold 
for  an  overcoat ;  " — the  price  of  the  over 
coat  having  been  the  113,000  in  paper  money. 
Cornwallis,  as  we  have  seen,  destroyed  Jef 
ferson's  property  to  an  amount  more  than 
double  this  debt,  which  might  be  considered 
as  a  second  payment  of  it ;  but  Jefferson 
finally  paid  it  the  third  time,  —  and  this 
time  into  the  hands  of  the  actual  creditor. 
Meanwhile,  he  wrote :  "  The  torment  of 
mind  I  endure  till  the  moment  shall  arrive 
when  I  shall  not  owe  a  shilling  on  earth  is 
such  really  as  to  render  life  of  little  value." 
Urged  by  all  these  motives,  Jefferson  had 
resolved  to  resign  his  office  in  1792,  not 
withstanding  the  remonstrances  of  Wash 
ington  ;  but  the  attacks  made  upon  him  by 
the  Federalists,  especially  those  made  in  the 
newspapers,  were  so  violent  that  a  retire 
ment  at  that  time  would  have  given  the  pub 
lic  cause  to  believe  that  he  had  been  driven 
from  office  by  his  enemies.  Jefferson, 
therefore,  concluded  to  remain  Secretary  of 
State  a  few  months  longer ;  and  those  few, 
as  it  happened,  were  the  most  important  of 
the  whole  term. 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE  93 

On  January  21,  1793,  King  Louis  of 
France  was  executed,  and  within  a  week 
thereafter  England  was  at  war  with  the  new 
rulers  of  the  French.  Difficult  questions  at 
once  arose  under  our  treaties  with  France. 
The  French  people  thought  that  we  were  in 
honor  bound  to  assist  them  in  their  struggle 
against  Great  Britain,  as  they  had  assisted 
us  ;  and  they  sent  over  as  minister  "  Citi 
zen  "  Genet,  in  the  frigate  L'Embuscade. 
The  frigate,  carrying  forty  guns  and  three 
hundred  men,  sailed  into  the  harbor  of 
Charleston,  April  8, 1795,  with  a  liberty-cap 
for  her  figure-head,  and  a  British  prize  in 
her  wake.  Citizen  Genet,  even  for  a  French 
man,  was  a  most  indiscreet  and  hot-headed 
person,  and  before  he  had  been  a  week  on 
shore  he  had  issued  commissions  to  priva 
teers  manned  by  American  citizens.  L'Em 
buscade  then  proceeded  to  Philadelphia, 
where,  as  in  Charleston,  Citizen  Genet  was 
welcomed  with  the  utmost  enthusiasm.  His 
coming  was  hailed  by  the  Republicans  gener 
ally  with  rapture  ;  and  their  cry  was  for 
war.  "  I  wish,"  wrote  Jefferson,  in  a  con- 


04  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

fidential  letter  to  Monroe,  "  that  we  may  be 
able  to  repress  the  people  within  the  limits 
of  a  fair  neutrality." 

This  was  the  position  taken  also  by 
Washington  and  the  whole  cabinet ;  and  it 
is  a  striking  example  of  Jefferson's  wisdom, 
justice,  and  firmness,  that,  although  the 
bulk  of  the  Eepublicans  were  carried  off 
their  feet  by  sympathy  with  France  and 
with  Genet,  he,  the  very  person  in  the  United 
States  who  most  loved  the  French  and  best 
understood  the  causes  and  motives  of  the 
French  Revolution,  withstood  the  storm,  and 
kept  his  eye  fixed  upon  the  interests  of  his 
own  country.  England,  contrary  to  the 
treaty  which  closed  the  Eevolutionary  War, 
still  retained  her  military  posts  in  the  west ; 
and  she  was  the  undisputed  mistress  of  the 
sea.  War  with  her  would  therefore  have 
been  suicidal  for  the  United  States.  The 
time  for  that  had  not  yet  come.  Moreover, 
if  the  United  States  had  taken  sides  with 
France,  a  war  with  Spain  also  would  inev 
itably  have  followed ;  and  Spain  then  held 
Florida  and  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi. 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE  95 

Nevertheless,  there  were  different  ways  of 
preserving  neutrality :  there  were  the  offen 
sive  way  and  the  friendly  way.  Hamilton, 
whose  extreme  bias  toward  England  made 
him  bitter  against  France,  was  always  for 
the  one  ;  Jefferson  for  the  other.  A  single 
example  will  suffice  as  an  illustration.  M. 
Genet  asked  as  a  favor  that  the  United 
States  should  advance  an  installment  of  its 
debt  to  France.  Hamilton  advised  that  the 
request  be  refused  without  a  word  of  expla 
nation.  Jefferson's  opinion  was  that  the 
request  should  be  granted,  if  that  were  law 
ful,  and  if  it  were  found  to  be  unlawful,  them 
that  the  refusal  should  be  explained.  Mr. 
Jefferson's  advice  was  followed. 

Mr.  Jefferson,  also,  though  he  firmly  with 
stood  the  many  illegal  and  unwarrantable 
acts  attempted  by  Genet,  did  so  in  such  a 
manner  as  not  to  lose  the  friendship  of  the 
minister  or  even  a  degree  of  control  over 
him.  To  Madison  Jefferson  wrote  of  Genet : 
"  He  renders  my  position  immensely  difficult. 
He  does  me  justice  personally ;  and  giving 
him  time  to  vent  himself  and  become  more 


96  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

cool,  I  am  on  a  footing  to  advise  him  freely, 
and  he  respects  it ;  but  he  will  break  out 
again  on  the  very  first  occasion." 

Finally  Citizen  Genet,  becoming  desper 
ate,  fitted  out  one  of  L'Embuscade's  prizes 
as  a  frigate  to  be  used  against  England, 
which  amounted  on  the  part  of  the  United 
States  to  a  breach  of  neutrality  ;  and  being 
hindered  in  sending  her  to  sea,  he  threat 
ened  to  appeal  from  the  President  to  the 
people  of  the  United  States.  Thereupon 
the  question  arose,  what  shall  be  done  with 
Genet  ?  and  upon  this  question  the  cabinet 
divided  with  more  than  usual  acrimony. 
Knox  was  for  sending  him  out  of  the  coun 
try  without  ceremony;  Hamilton  for  pub 
lishing  the  whole  correspondence  between 
him  and  the  government,  with  a  statement 
of  his  proceedings.  Jefferson  was  for  send 
ing  an  account  of  the  affair  to  the  French 
government,  with  copies  of  the  correspond 
ence,  and  a  request  for  Genet's  recall. 
Meanwhile  the  whole  country  was  thrown 
into  a  state  of  tumultuous  excitement.  There 
was  a  riot  in  Philadelphia;  and  even  the 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE  97 

sacred  character  of  Washington  was  assailed 
in  prose  and  verse. 

The  President  decided  to  adopt  the  course 
proposed  by  Jefferson;  France  appointed 
another  minister,  and  the  Genet  episode 
ended  by  his  marriage  to  a  daughter  of 
George  Clinton,  governor  of  New  York,  in 
which  State  he  lived  thereafter  as  a  respect 
able  citizen  and  a  patron  of  agriculture. 
He  died  in  the  year  1834. 

The  summer  of  delirium  at  Philadelphia 
culminated  in  the  panic  and  desolation  of 
the  yellow  fever,  and  every  member  of  the 
government  fled  from  the  city,  Jefferson  be 
ing  the  last  to  depart. 

When,  in  the  next  year,  the  correspond 
ence  between  Genet  and  Jefferson,  and  be 
tween  the  English  minister  and  Jefferson, 
was  published,  the  Secretary  was  seen  to 
have  conducted  it  on  his  part  with  so  much 
ability,  discretion,  and  tact,  and  with  so 
true  a  sense  of  what  was  due  to  each  nation 
concerned,  that  he  may  be  said  to  have  re 
tired  to  his  farm  in  a  blaze  of  glory. 


IX 

THE   TWO   PARTIES 

WHEN  Jefferson  at  last  found  himself  at 
Monticello,  having  resigned  his  office  as 
Secretary  of  State,  he  declared  and  believed 
that  he  had  done  with  politics  forever.  To 
various  correspondents  he  wrote  as  follows : 
".I  think  that  I  shall  never  take  another 
newspaper  of  any  sort.  I  find  my  mind 
totally  absorbed  in  my  rural  occupations. 
.  .  .  No  circumtances,  my  dear  sir,  will  ever 
more  tempt  me  to  engage  in  anything  public. 
...  I  wQuld  not  give  up  my  retirement  for 
the  empire  of  the  universe." 

When  Madison  wrote  in  1795,  soliciting 
him  to  accept  the  Republican  nomination 
for  the  presidency,  Mr.  Jefferson  replied  : 
"  The  little  spice  of  ambition  which  I  had 
in  my  younger  days  has  long  since  evapo 
rated,  and  I  set  still  less  store  by  a  post 
humous  than  present  fame.  The  question 


THE  TWO  PARTIES  99 

is  forever  closed  with  me."  Nevertheless, 
within  a  few  months  Mr.  Jefferson  accepted 
the  nomination,  chiefly,  it  is  probable, because, 
with  his  usual  sagacity,  he  foresaw  that  the 
Republican  candidate  would  be  defeated  as 
President,  but  elected  as  Vice-President.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  at  that  time  the 
candidate  receiving  the  next  to  the  highest 
number  of  electoral  votes  was  declared  to  be 
Vice-President ;  so  that  there  was  always  a 
probability  that  the  presidential  candidate 
of  the  party  defeated  would  be  chosen  to  the 
second  office. 

There  were  several  reasons  why  Jefferson 
would  have  been  glad  to  receive  the  office  of 
Vice-President.  It  involved  no  disagreeable 
responsibility ;  it  called  for  no  great  expen 
diture  of  money  in  the  way  of  entertain 
ments  ;  it  carried  a  good  salary ;  it  required 
only  a  few  months'  residence  at  Washington. 
"  Mr.  Jefferson  often  told  me,"  remarks 
Mr.  Bacon, "  that  the  office  of  Vice-President 
was  far  preferable  to  that  of  President." 

Mr.  Jefferson  therefore  became  the  Eepub- 
lican  nominee  for  President,  and,  as  he  doubt- 


100  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

less  expected,  was  elected  Vice-President, 
the,,  vote  standing  as  follows :  Adams,  71 ; 
Jefferson,  68 j  Pinckney,  59 ;  Burr,  30. 

It  is  significant  of  Mr.  Jefferson's  high 
standing  in  the  country  that  many  people 
believed  that  he  would  not  deign  to  accept 
the  office  of  Vice-President ;  and  Madison 
wrote  advising  him  to  come  to  Washington 
on  the  4th  of  March,  and  take  the  oath  of 
office,  in  order  that  this  belief  might  be  dis 
pelled.  Jefferson  accordingly  did  so,  bring 
ing  with  him  the  bones  of  a  mastodon,  lately 
discovered,  and  a  little  manuscript  book  writ 
ten  in  his  law-student  days,  marked  "  Parlia 
mentary  Pocket-Book."  This  was  the  basis 
of  that  careful  and  elaborate  "  Manual  of 
Parliamentary  Practice  "  which  Jefferson  left 
as  his  legacy  to  the  Senate. 

Upon  receiving  news  of  the  election  Jef 
ferson  had  written  to  Madison  :  "If  Mr. 
Adams  can  be  induced  to  administer  the  gov 
ernment  on  its  true  principles,  and  to  relin 
quish  his  bias  to  an  English  Constitution,  it 
is  to  be  considered  whether  it  would  not  be, 
on  the  whole,  for  the  public  good  to  come  to 


THE  TWO  PARTIES  101 

a  good  understanding  with  him  as  to  his 
future  elections.  He  is  perhaps  the  only 
sure  barrier  against  Hamilton's  getting  in." 

Mr.  Adams,  indeed,  at  the  outset  of  his 
administration,  was  inclined  to  be  confiden 
tial  with  Mr.  Jefferson  ;  but  soon,  by  one  of 
those  sudden  turns  not  infrequent  with  him, 
he  took  a  different  course,  and  thenceforth 
treated  the  Vice-President  with  nothing  more 
than  bare  civility. 

It  was  a  time,  indeed,  when  cordial  relations 
between  Federalist  and  Kepublican  were  al 
most  impossible.  In  a  letter  written  at  this 
period  to  Mr.  Edward  Kutledge,  Jefferson 
said  :  "  You  and  I  have  formerly  seen  warm 
debates,  and  high  political  passions.  But 
gentlemen  of  different  politics  would  then 
speak  to  each  other,  and  separate  the  business 
of  the  Senate  from  that  of  society.  It  is  not 
so  now.  Men  who  have  been  intimate  all 
their  lives  cross  the  street  to  avoid  meeting, 
and  turn  their  heads  another  way,  lest  they 
should  be  obliged  to  touch  their  hats." 

These  party  feelings  were  intensified  in  the 
year  1798  by  what  is  known  as  the  X  Y  Z 


102  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

business.  Mr.  Adams  had  sent  three  com 
missioners  to  Paris  to  negotiate  a  treaty. 
Talleyrand,  the  French  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs,  held  aloof  from  them ;  but  they  were 
informed  by  certain  mysterious  agents  that 
a  treaty  could  be  had  on  three  conditions, 
(1)  that  the  President  should  apologize  for 
certain  expressions  in  his  recent  message  to 
Congress  ;  (2)  that  the  United  States  should 
loan  a  large  sum  of  money  to  the  French 
government ;  (3)  that  a  douceur  of  125,000 
should  be  given  to  Talleyrand's  agents. 

These  insulting  proposals  were  indignantly 
rejected  by  the  commissioners,  and  being  re 
ported  in  this  country,  they  aroused  a  storm 
of  popular  indignation.  Preparations  for  war 
were  made  forthwith.  General  Washing 
ton,  though  in  failing  health,  was  appointed 
commander-in-chief ,  —  the  real  command  be 
ing  expected  to  devolve  upon  Hamilton,  who 
was  named  second ;  men  and  supplies  were 
voted  ;  letters  of  marque  were  issued,  and  war 
actually  prevailed  upon  the  high  seas.  The 
situation  redounded  greatly  to  the  advantage 
of  the  Federalists,  for  they  were  always  as 


THE  TWO  PARTIES  103 

eager  to  go  to  war  with  France  as  they  were 
reluctant  to  go  to  war  with  England.  The 
newly  appointed  officers  were  drawn  almost, 
if  not  quite,  without  exception  from  the  Fed 
eralist  party,  and  Hamilton  seemed  to  be  on 
the  verge  of  that  military  career  which  he 
had  long  hoped  for.  He  trusted,  as  his  most 
intimate  friend,  Gouverneur  Morris,  said  after 
his  death,  "  that  in  the  changes  and  chances 
of  time  we  would  be  involved  in  some  war 
which  might  strengthen  our  union  and  nerve 
our  executive."  So  late  as  1802,  Hamilton 
wrote  to  Morris,  "  there  must  be  a  systematic 
and  persevering  endeavor  to  establish  the 
future  of  a  great  empire  on  foundations  much 
firmer  than  have  yet  been  devised."  At  this 
very  time  he  was  negotiating  with  Miranda 
and  with  the  British  government,  his  design 
being  to  use  against  Mexico  the  army  raised 
in  expectation  of  a  war  with  France. 

Hamilton  was  not  the  man  to  overturn 
the  government  out  of  personal  ambition, 
nor  even  in  order  to  set  up  a  monarchy  in 
place  of  a  republic.  But  he  had  convinced 
himself  that  the  republic  must  some  day  fall 


104  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

of  its  own  weight.  He  was  always  antici 
pating  a  "  crisis,"  and  this  word  is  repeated 
over  and  over  again  in  his  correspondence. 
It  even  occurs  in  the  crucial  sentence  of  that 
pathetic  document  which  he  wrote  on  the  eve 
of  his  fatal  duel.  When  the  "  crisis  "  came, 
Hamilton  meant  to  be  on  hand ;  and,  if  pos 
sible,  at  the  head  of  an  army. 

However,  the  X  Y  Z  affair  ended  peace 
fully.  The  warlike  spirit  shown  by  the  people 
of  the  United  States  had  a  wholesome  effect 
upon  the  French  government ;  and  at  their 
suggestion  new  envoys  were  sent  over  by  the 
President,  by  whom  a  treaty  was  negotiated. 
This  wise  and  patriotic  act  upon  the  part  of 
Mr.  Adams  was  a  benefit  to  his  country,  but 
it  aroused  the  bitter  anger  of  the  Federalists 
and  ruined  his  position  in  that  party. 

But  what  was  Mr.  Jefferson's  attitude 
during  this  business  ?  He  was  not  for  war, 
and  he  contended  that  a  distinction  should 
be  made  between  the  acts  of  Talleyrand  and 
his  agents,  and  the  real  disposition  of  the 
French  people.  He  wrote  as  follows  :  "  In 
experienced  in  such  manoeuvres,  the  people 


THE  TWO  PARTIES  105 

did  not  permit  themselves  even  to  suspect 
that  the  turpitude  of  private  swindlers  might 
mingle  itself  unobserved,  and  give  its  own 
hue  to  the  communications  of  the  French 
government,  of  whose  participation  there  was 
neither  proof  nor  probability."  And  again: 
"  But  as  I  view  a  peace  between  France  and 
England  the  ensuing  winter  to  be  certain, 
I  have  thought  it  would  have  been  better  for 
us  to  have  contrived  to  bear  from  France 
through  the  present  summer  what  we  have 
been  bearing  both  from  her  and  from  Eng 
land  these  four  years,  and  still  continue  to 
bear  from  England,  and  to  have  required  in 
demnification  in  the  hour  of  peace,  when,  I 
firmly  believe,  it  would  have  been  yielded 
by  both." 

But  this  is  bad  political  philosophy.  A 
nation  cannot  obtain  justice  by  submitting 
to  wrongs  or  insults  even  for  a  time.  Jef 
ferson  himself  had  written  long  before  :  "I 
think  it  is  our  interest  to  punish  the  first 
insult,  because  an  insult  unpunished  is  the 
parent  of  many  others."  It  is  possible  that 
he  was  misled  at  this  juncture  by  his  liking 


106  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

for  France,  and  by  his  dislike  of  the  Feder 
alists  and  of  their  British  proclivities.  It  is 
true  that  the  bribe  demanded  by  Talley 
rand's  agents  might  be  considered,  to  use 
Mr.  Jefferson's  words,  as  "  the  turpitude  of 
private  swindlers ; "  but  the  demand  for  a 
loan  and  for  a  retraction  could  be  regarded 
only  as  national  acts,  being  acts  of  the 
French  government,  although  the  bulk  of 
the  French  people  might  repudiate  them. 

Whether  Jefferson  was  right  or  wrong  in 
the  position  which  he  took,  he  maintained  it 
with  superb  self-confidence  and  aplomb.  For 
the  moment,  the  Federalists  had  everything 
their  own  way.  They  carried  the  election. 
Hamilton's  oft-anticipated  "  crisis  "  seemed 
to  have  arrived  at  last.  But  Jefferson  coolly 
waited  till  the  storm  should  blow  over.  "  Our 
countrymen,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend,  "  are  es 
sentially  Republicans.  They  retain  unadul 
terated  the  principles  of  '76,  and  those  who 
are  conscious  of  no  change  in  themselves 
have  nothing  to  fear  in  the  long  run." 

And  so  it  proved.  The  ascendency  of 
the  Federalists  was  soon  destroyed,  and  de- 


THE  TWO  PARTIES  107 

stroyed  forever,  by  the  political  crimes  and 
follies  which  they  committed ;  and  especially 
by  the  alien  and  sedition  laws.  The  reader 
need  hardly  be  reminded  that  the  alien  law 
gave  the  President  authority  to  banish  from 
the  country  "all  such  aliens  as  lie  should 
judge  dangerous  to  the  peace  and  safety 
of  the  United  States,"  -  —  a  despotic  power 
which  no  king  of  England  ever  possessed. 
The  sedition  act  made  it  a  crime,  punishable 
by  fine  and  imprisonment,  to  speak  or  write 
anything  "  false,  scandalous,  and  malicious," 
with  intent  to  excite  against  either  House  of 
Congress  or  against  the  President, "  the  hatred 
of  the  good  people  of  the  United  States." 
It  can  readily  be  seen  what  gross  oppression 
was  possible  under  this  elastic  law,  inter 
preted  by  judges  who,  to  a  man,  were  mem 
bers  of  the  Federal  party.  Matthew  Lyon,  of 
Vermont,  ventured  to  read  aloud  at  a  politi 
cal  meeting  a  letter  which  he  had  received 
expressing  astonishment  that  the  President's 
recent  address  to  the  House  of  Representa 
tives  had  not  been  answered  byuan  order 
to  send  him  to  a  mad-house."  For  this  Mr. 


108  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Lyon  was  fined  11,000,  and  imprisoned  in  a 
veritable  dungeon. 

These  unconstitutional  and  un-American 
laws  were  vigorously  opposed  by  Jefferson 
and  Madison.  In  October,  1798,  Jefferson 
wrote  :  "  For  my  own  part  I  consider  those 
laws  as  merely  an  experiment  on  the  Ameri 
can  mind  to  see  how  far  it  will  bear  an 
avowed  violation  of  the  Constitution.  If 
this  goes  down,  we  shall  immediately  see 
attempted  another  act  of  Congress  declaring 
that  the  President  shall  continue  in  office 
during  life,  reserving  to  another  occasion 
the  transfer  of  the  succession  to  his  heirs, 
and  the  establishment  of  the  Senate  for 
life. " 

Jefferson  also  prepared  the  famous  Ken 
tucky  resolutions,  which  were  adopted  by 
the  legislature  of  that  State,  —  the  author 
ship,  however,  being  kept  secret  till  Jeffer 
son  avowed  it,  twenty  years  later.  These 
much-discussed  resolutions  have  been  said 
to  have  originated  the  doctrine  of  nullifica 
tion,  and  to  contain  that  principle  of  seces 
sion  upon  which  the  South  acted  in  1861. 


THE  TWO  PARTIES  109 

They  may  be  summed  up  roughly  as  fol 
lows  :  The  source  of  all  political  power  is  in 
the  people.  The  people  have,  by  the  compact 
known  as  the  Constitution,  granted  certain 
specified  powers  to  the  federal  government ; 
all  other  powers,  if  not  granted  to  the  sev 
eral  state  governments,  are  retained  by  the 
people.  The  alien  and  sedition  laws  assume 
the  exercise  by  the  federal  government  of 
powers  not  granted  to  it  by  the  Constitu 
tion.  They  are  therefore  void. 

Thus  far  there  can  be  no  question  that 
Jefferson's  argument  was  sound,  and  its 
soundness  would  not  be  denied,  even  at  the 
present  day.  But  the  question  then  arose  : 
what  next?  May  the  laws  be  disregarded 
and  disobeyed  by  the  States  or  by  individu 
als,  or  must  they  be  obeyed  until  some  com 
petent  authority  has  pronounced  them  void  ? 
and  if  so,  what  is  that  authority?  We  un 
derstand  now  that  the  Supreme  Court  has 
sole  authority  to  decide  upon  the  constitu 
tionality  of  the  acts  of  Congress.  It  was  so 
held,  for  the  first  time,  in  the  year  1803,  in 
the  case  of  Marbury  v.  Madison,  by  Chief 


110  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Justice  Marshall  and  his  associates  ;  and  that 
decision,  though  resisted  at  the  time,  has 
long  been  accepted  by  the  country  as  a 
whole.  But  this  case  did  not  arise  until 
several  years  after  the  Kentucky  Resolutions 
were  written.  Moreover,  Marshall  was  an 
extreme  Federalist,  and  his  view  was  by  no 
means  the  commonly  accepted  view.  Jeffer 
son  scouted  it.  He  protested  all  his  life 
against  the  assumption  that  the  Supreme 
Court,  a  body  of  men  appointed  for  life,  and 
thus  removed  from  all  control  by  the  peo 
ple,  should  have  the  enormous  power  of  con 
struing  the  Constitution  and  of  passing  upon 
the  validity  of  national  laws.  In  a  letter 
written  in  1804,  he  said:  "You  seem  to 
think  it  devolved  on  the  judges  to  decide 
the  validity  of  the  sedition  law.  But  no 
thing  in  the  Constitution  has  given  them  a 
right  to  decide  for  the  executive  more  than 
the  executive  to  decide  for  them.  But  the 
opinion  which  gives  to  the  judges  the  right 
to  decide  what  laws  are  constitutional  and 
what  not  —  not  only  for  themselves  in  their 
own  sphere  of  action,  but  for  the  legislature 


THE  TWO  PARTIES  111 

and  executive  also  in  their  spheres  —  would 
make  the  judiciary  a  despotic  branch." l 

In  the  Kentucky  resolutions,  Jefferson 
argued,  first,  that  the  Constitution  was  a 
compact  between  the  States ;  secondly,  that 
no  person  or  body  had  been  appointed  by 
the  Constitution  as  a  common  judge  in  re 
spect  to  questions  arising  under  the  Consti 
tution  between  any  one  State  and  Congress, 
or  between  the  people  and  Congress  ;  and 
thirdly,  "  as  in  all  other  cases  of  compact 
among  powers  having  no  common  judge, 
each  party  has  an  equal  right  to  judge  for 
itself,  as  well  of  infractions  as  of  the  mode 
and  measure  of  redress."  It  was  open  to 
him  to  take  this  view,  because  it  had  not 
yet  been  decided  that  the  Supreme  Court 
was  the  "  common  judge  "  appointed  by  the 
Constitution;  and  the  Constitution  itself 

1  Abraham  Lincoln  said  in  his  first  inaugural  address : 
— "  But  if  the  policy  of  the  government  upon  a  vital 
question  affecting  the  whole  people  is  to  be  irrevocably 
fixed  by  the  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court,  the  moment 
they  are  made,  the  people  will  cease  to  be  their  own 
masters ;  having  to  that  extent  resigned  their  govern 
ment  into  the  hands  of  that  eminent  tribunal." 


112  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

was  not  explicit  upon  the  point.  Moreover, 
the  laws  in  question  had  not  been  passed 
upon  by  the  Supreme  Court,  —  they  expired 
by  limitation  before  that  stage  was  reached. 

It  must  be  admitted,  then,  that  the  Ken 
tucky  resolutions  do  contain  the  principles 
of  nullification.  But  at  the  time  when  they 
were  written,  nullification  was  a  permissible 
doctrine,  because  it  was  not  certainly  ex 
cluded  by  the  Constitution.  In  1803,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  Constitution  was  interpreted 
by  the  Supreme  Court  as  excluding  this 
doctrine ;  and  that  decision  having  been  re 
affirmed  repeatedly,  and  having  been  acqui 
esced  in  by  the  nation  for  fifty  years,  may 
fairly  be  said  to  have  become  by  the  year 
1861  the  law  of  the  land. 

Jefferson,  however,  by  no  means  intended 
to  push  matters  to  their  logical  conclusion. 
His  resolutions  were  intended  for  moral 
effect,  as  he  explained  in  the  following  let 
ter  to  Madison :  — 

"  I  think  we  should  distinctly  affirm  all 
the  important  principles  they  contain,  so  as 
to  hold  to  that  ground  in  future,  and  leave 


THE  TWO  PARTIES  113 

the  matter  in  such  a  train  that  we  may  not 
be  committed  absolutely  to  push  the  matter 
to  extremities,  and  yet  may  be  free  to  push 
as  far  as  events  will  render  prudent." 

As  to  the  charge  that  the  Kentucky  Reso 
lutions  imply  the  doctrine  of  secession,  as 
well  as  that  of  nullification,  it  has  no  basis. 
The  two  doctrines  do  not  stand  or  fall  to 
gether.  There  is  nothing  in  the  resolutions 
which  implies  the  right  of  secession.  Jeffer 
son,  like  most  Americans  of  his  day,  contem 
plated  with  indifference  the  possibility  of  an 
ultimate  separation  of  the  region  beyond  the 
Mississippi  from  the  United  States.  But 
nobody  placed  a  higher  value  than  he  did  on 
what  he  described  "  as  our  union,  the  last 
anchor  of  our  hope,  and  that  alone  which  is 
to  prevent  this  heavenly  country  from  becom 
ing  an  arena  of  gladiators." 


PRESIDENT   JEFFERSON 

FOR  the  presidential  election  of  1800, 
Adams  was  again  the  candidate  on  the  Fed 
eral  side,  and  Jefferson  on  the  Kepublican 
side.  Jefferson,  by  interviews,  by  long  and 
numerous  letters,  by  the  commanding  force 
of  his  own  intellect  and  character,  had  at 
last  welded  the  anti-Federal  elements  into  a 
compact  and  disciplined  Republican  party. 
The  contest  was  waged  with  the  utmost  bit 
terness,  and  especially  with  bitterness  against 
Jefferson.  For  this  there  were  several  causes. 
Jefferson  had  deeply  offended  two  powerful 
classes  in  Virginia,  the  old  aristocratic  and 
Tory  element,  and  —  excluding  the  dissent 
ers  —  the  religious  element ;  the  former,  by 
the  repeal  of  the  law  of  entail,  and  the  latter 
by  the  statute  for  freedom  of  religion  in  Vir 
ginia.  These  were  among  the  most  meri 
torious  acts  of  his  life,  but  they  produced  an 


PRESIDENT  JEFFERSON  115 

intense  enmity  which  lasted  till  his  death 
and  even  beyond  his  death.  Jefferson,  also, 
though  at  times  over-cautious,  was  at  times 
rash  and  indiscreet,  and  the  freedom  of  his 
comments  upon  men  and  measures  often  got 
him  into  trouble. )(  His  career  will  be  mis 
understood  unless  it  is  remembered  that  he 
was  an  impulsive  man.  His  judgments  were 
intuitive,  and  though  usually  correct,  yet 
sometimes  hasty  and  ill-considered. 

Above  all,  Jefferson  was  both  for  friends 
and  foes  the  embodiment  of  Republicanism. 
He  represented  those  ideas  which  the  Feder 
alists,  and  especially  the  New  England  law 
yers  and  clergy,  really  believed  to  be  subver 
sive  of  law  and  order,  of  government  and 
religion.  To  them  he  figured  as  "  a  fanatic 
in  politics,  and  an  atheist  in  religion  ;  "  and 
they  were  so  disposed  to  believe  everything 
bad  of  him  that  they  swallowed  whole  the 
worst  slanders  which  the  political  violence 
of  the  times,  far  exceeding  that  of  the  pre 
sent  day,  could  invent.  We  have  seen  with 
what  tenderness  Jefferson  treated  his  wid 
owed  sister,  Mrs.  Carr,  and  her  children. 


11G  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

It  was  in  reference  to  this  very  family  that 
the  Eev.  Mr.  Cotton  Mather  Smith,  of  Con 
necticut,  declared  that  Jefferson  had  gained 
his  estate  by  robbery,  namely,  by  robbing  a 
widow  and  her  children  of  £10,000,  "  all  of 
which  can  be  proved." 

Jefferson,  as  we  have  said,  was  a  deist. 
He  was  a  religious  man  and  a  daily  reader 
of  the  Bible,  far  less  extreme  in  his  notions, 
less  hostile  to  orthodox  Christianity  than 
John  Adams.  Nevertheless,  —  partly,  per 
haps,  because  he  had  procured  the  disestab 
lishment  of  the  Virginia  Church,  partly  on 
account  of  his  scientific  tastes  and  his  lik 
ing  for  French  notions,  —  the  Federalists 
had  convinced  themselves  that  he  was  a  vio 
lent  atheist  and  anti-Christian.  It  was  a 
humorous  saying  of  the  time  that  the  old 
women  of  New  England  hid  their  Bibles  in 
the  well  when  Jefferson's  election  in  1800 
became  known. 

The  vote  was  as  follows  :  —  Jefferson,  73, 
Burr,  73  ;  Adams,  65  ;  C.  C.  Pinckney,  64  ; 
Jay,  1.  There  being  a  tie  between  Jefferson 
and  Burr,  the  Republican  candidate  for 


PRESIDENT  JEFFERSON  117 

Vice-President,  the  election  was  thrown 
into  the  House  of  Representatives,  voting  by 
States.  In  that  House  the  Federalists  were 
in  the  majority,  but  they  did  not  have  a  ma 
jority  by  States.  They  could  not,  therefore, 
elect  Adams  ;  but  it  was  possible  for  them 
to  make  Burr  President  instead  of  Jefferson. 
At  first,  the  leaders  were  inclined  to  do 
this,  some  believing  that  Burr's  utter  want 
of  principle  was  less  dangerous  than  the  per 
nicious  principles  which  they  ascribed  to 
Jefferson,  and  others  thinking  that  Burr,  if 
elected  by  Federal  votes,  would  pursue  a 
Federal  policy.  It  was  feared  that  Jefferson 
would  wipe  out  the  national  debt,  abolish 
the  navy,  and  remove  every  Federal  office 
holder  in  the  land.  He  was  approached  from 
many  quarters,  and  even  President  Adams 
desired  him  to  give  some  intimation  of  his 
intended  policy  on  these  points,  but  Jeffer 
son  firmly  refused. 

/As  to  one  such  interview,  with  Gouverneur 
Morris,  Jefferson  wrote  afterward  :  "  I  told 
him  that  I  should  leave  the  world  to  judge 
of  the  course  I  meant  to  pursue,  by  that 


118  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

which  I  had  pursued  hitherto,  believing  it 
to  be  my  duty  to  be  passive  and  silent  dur 
ing  the  present  scene  ;  that  1  should  certainly 
make  no  terms  ;  should  never  go  into  the 
office  of  President  by  capitulation,  nor  with 
my  hands  tied  by  any  conditions  which 
would  hinder  me  from  pursuing  the  measures 
which  I  should  deem  for  the  public  good."-/— 

The  Federalists  had  a  characteristic  plan : 
they  proposed  to  pass  a  law  devolving  the 
Presidency  upon  the  chairman  of  the  Senate, 
in  case  the  office  of  President  should  become 
vacant ;  and  this  vacancy  they  would  be  able 
to  bring  about  by  prolonging  the  election 
until  Mr.  Adams's  term  of  office  had  expired. 
The  chairman  of  the  Senate,  a  Federalist,  of 
course,  would  then  become  President.  This 
scheme  Jefferson  and  his  friends  were  pre 
pared  to  resist  by  force.  "  Because,"  as  he 
afterward  explained,  "  that  precedent  once 
set,  it  would  be  artificially  reproduced,  and 
would  soon  end  in  a  dictator." 

Hamilton,  to  his  credit,  be  it  said,  strongly 
advocated  the  election  of  Jefferson ;  and 
finally,  through  the  action  of  Mr.  Bayard, 


PRESIDENT  JEFFERSON  119 

of  Delaware,  a  leading  Federalist,  who  had 
sounded  an  intimate  friend  of  Mr.  Jefferson 
as  to  his  views  upon  the  points  already  men 
tioned,  Mr.  Jefferson  was  elected  President, 
and  the  threatening  civil  war  was  averted. 

Mr.  Adams,  who  was  deeply  chagrined  by 
his  defeat,  did  not  attend  the  inaugura 
tion  of  his  successor,  but  left  Washington 
in  his  carriage,  at  sunrise,  on  the  fourth  of 
March ;  and  Jefferson  rode  on  horseback  to 
the  Capitol,  unattended,  and  dismounting, 
fastened  his  horse  to  the  fence  with  his  own 
hands.  The  inaugural  address,  brief,  and 
beautifully  worded,  surprised  most  of  those 
who  heard  it  by  the  moderation  and  liberality 
of  its  tone.  "  Let  us,"  said  the  new  Presi 
dent,  "  restore  to  social  intercourse  that  har 
mony  and  affection  without  which  liberty, 
and  even  life  itself,  are  but  dreary  things." 

Jefferson  served  two  terms,  and  he  was 
succeeded  first  by  Madison,  and  then  by 
Monroe,  both  of  whom  were  his  friends  and 
disciples,  and  imbued  with  his  ideas.  They, 
also,  were  reflected.  For  twenty-four  years, 
therefore,  Jefferson  and  Jeffersonian  De- 


120  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

mocracy  predominated  in  the  government  of 
the  United  States,  and  the  period  was  an 
exceedingly  prosperous  one.  Not  one  of  the 
dismal  forebodings  of  the  Federalists  was 
fulfilled;  and  the  practicability  of  popular 
government  was  proved. 

The  first  problem  with  which  Jefferson 
had  to  deal  was  that  of  appointments  to 
office.  The  situation  was  much  like  that 
which  afterward  confronted  President  Cleve 
land  when  he  entered  upon  his  first  term,  — 
that  is,  every  place  was  filled  by  a  member 
of  the  party  opposed  to  the  new  administra 
tion.  The  principle  which  Mr.  Jefferson 
adopted  closely  resembles  that  afterward 
adopted  by  Mr.  Cleveland,  namely,  no  office 
holder  was  to  be  displaced  on  account  of  his 
political  belief ;  but  if  he  acted  aggressively 
in  politics,  that  was  to  be  sufficient  ground 
for  removal.  "  Electioneering  activity  "  was 
the  phrase  used  in  Mr.  Jefferson's  time,  and 
"  offensive  partisanship  "  in  Mr.  Cleveland's. 

The  following  letter  from  President  Jef 
ferson  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  will 
show  how  the  rule  was  construed  by  him  :  — 


PRESIDENT  JEFFERSON  121 

"  The  allegations  against  Pope  [collector] 
of  New  Bedford  are  insufficient.  Although 
meddling  in  political  caucuses  is  no  part  of 
that  freedom  of  personal  suffrage  which 
ought  to  be  allowed  him,  yet  his  mere  pre 
sence  at  a  caucus  does  not  necessarily  in 
volve  an  active  and  official  influence  in  oppo 
sition  to  the  government  which  employs 
him." 

There  were  some  lapses,  but,  on  the  whole, 
Mr.  Jefferson's  rule  was  adhered  to ;  and  it 
is  difficult  to  say  whether  he  received  more 
abuse  from  the  Federalists  on  account  of  the 
removals  which  he  did  make,  or  from  a  fac 
tion  in  his  own  party  on  account  of  the 
removals  which  he  refused  to  make. 

His  principle  was  thus  stated  in  a  letter : 
"  If  a  due  participation  of  office  is  a  matter 
of  right,  how  are  vacancies  to  be  obtained  ? 
Those  by  death  are  few ;  by  resignation, 
none.  ...  It  would  have  been  to  me  a 
circumstance  of  great  relief,  had  I  found  a 
moderate  participation  of  office  in  the  hands 
of  the  majority.  I  should  gladly  have  left 
to  time  and  accident  to  raise  them  to  their 


122  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

just  share.  But  their  total  exclusion  calls 
for  prompter  corrections.  I  shall  correct 
the  procedure ;  but  that  done,  disdain  to 
follow  it.  I  shall  return  with  joy  to  that 
state  of  things  when  the  only  questions  con 
cerning  a  candidate  shall  be,  Is  he  honest  ? 
Is  he  capable  ?  Is  he  faithful  to  the  Con 
stitution  ?  " 

The  ascendency  of  Jefferson  and  of  the 
Republican  party  produced  a  great  change 
in  the  government  ancj  in  national  feeling, 
but  it  was  a  change  the  most  important  part 
of  which  was  intangible,  and  is  therefore 
hard  to  describe.  It  was  such  a  change  as 
takes  place  in  the  career  of  an  individual, 
when  he  shakes  off  some  controlling  force, 
and  sets  up  in  life  for  himself.  The  common 
people  felt  an  independence,  a  pride,  an  elan, 
which  sent  a  thrill  of  vigor  through  every 
department  of  industry  and  adventure. 

The  simplicity  of  the  forms  which  Presi 
dent  Jefferson  adopted  were  a  symbol  to  the 
national  imagination  of  the  change  which 
had  taken  place.  He  gave  up  the  royal  cus 
tom  of  levees ;  he  stopped  the  celebration 


PRESIDENT  JEFFERSON  1215 

of  the  President's  birthday  ;  he  substituted 
a  written  message  for  the  speech  to  Con 
gress  delivered  in  person  at  the  Capitol,  and 
the  reply  by  Congress,  delivered  in  person 
at  the  White  House.  The  President's  resi 
dence  ceased  to  be  called  the  Palace.  He 
cut  down  the  army  and  navy.  He  intro 
duced  economy  in  all  the  departments  of  the 
government,  and  paid  off  thirty-three  mil 
lions  of  the  national  debt.  He  procured  the 
abolition  of  internal  taxes  and  the  repeal  of 
the  bankruptcy  law  —  two  measures  which 
greatly  decreased  his  own  patronage,  and 
which  called  forth  John  Randolph's  enco 
mium  long  afterward :  "  I  have  never  seen 
but  one  administration  which  seriously  and 
in  good  faith  was  disposed  to  give  up  its 
patronage,  and  was  willing  to  go  farther 
than  Congress  or  even  the  people  themselves 
.  .  .  desired;  and  that  was  the  first  ad 
ministration  of  Thomas  Jefferson." 

The  two  most  important  measures  of  the 
first  administration  were,  however,  the  re 
pression  of  the  Barbary  pirates  and  the 
acquisition  of  Louisiana.  Mr.  Jefferson's 


124  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

ineffectual  efforts,  while  he  was  minister  to 
France,  to  put  down  by  force  Mediterranean 
piracy  have  already  been  rehearsed.  During 
Mr.  Adams's  term,  two  million  dollars  were 
expended  in  bribing  the  bucaneers.  One 
item  in  the  account  was  as  follows,  "  A  frig 
ate  to  carry  thirty-six  guns  for  the  Dey  of 
Algiers ; "  and  this  frigate  went  crammed 
with  a  hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth  of 
powder,  lead,  timber,  rope,  canvas,  and  other 
means  of  piracy.  One  hundred  and  twenty- 
two  captives  came  home  in  that  year,  1796, 
of  whom  ten  had  been  held  in  slavery  for 
eleven  years. 

Jefferson's  first  important  act  as  President 
was  to  dispatch  to  the  Mediterranean  three 
frigates  and  a  sloop-of-war  to  overawe  the 
pirates,  and  to  cruise  in  protection  of  Ameri 
can  commerce.  Thus  began  that  series  of 
events  which  finally  rendered  the  commerce 
of  the  world  as  safe  from  piracy  in  the 
Mediterranean  as  it  was  in  the  British  chan 
nel.  How  brilliantly  Decatur  and  his  gallant 
comrades  carried  out  this  policy,  and  how  at 
last  the  tardy  naval  powers  of  Europe  fol- 


PRESIDENT  JEFFERSON  125 

lowed  an  example  which  they  ought  to  have 
set,  every  one  is  supposed  to  know. 

The  second  important  event  was  the  acqui 
sition  of  Louisiana.  Louisiana  meant  the 
whole  territory  from  the  Mississippi  River  to 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  embracing  about  one  mil 
lion  square  miles.  All  this  region  belonged 
to  Spain  by  right  of  discovery  ;  and  early 
in  the  year  1801  news  came  from  the  Ameri 
can  minister  at  Paris  that  Spain  had  ceded 
or  was  about  to  cede  it  to  France.  The 
Spanish  ownership  of  the  mouth  of  the  Mis 
sissippi  had  long  been  a  source  of  annoyance 
to  the  settlers  on  the  Mississippi  River ;  and 
it  had  begun  to  be  felt  that  the  United  States 
must  control  New  Orleans  at  least.  If  this 
vast  territory  should  come  into  the  hands  of 
France,  and  Napoleon  should  colonize  it,  as 
was  said  to  be  his  intention,  —  France  then 
being  the  greatest  power  in  Europe,  —  the 
United  States  would  have  a  powerful  rival  on 
its  borders,  and  in  control  of  a  seaport  abso 
lutely  necessary  for  its  commerce.  We  can 
see  this  now  plainly  enough,  but  even  so  able 
a  man  as  Mr.  Livingston,  the  American 


126  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

minister  at  Paris,  did  not  see  it  then.  On 
the  contrary,  he  wrote  to  the  government  at 
Washington  :"...!  have,  however,  on  all 
occasions,  declared  that  as  long  as  France 
conforms  to  the  existing  treaty  between  us 
and  Spain,  the  government  of  the  United 
States  does  not  consider  itself  as  having  any 
interest  in  opposing  the  exchange." 

Mr.  Jefferson's  very  different  view  was 
expressed  in  the  following  letter  to  Mr. 
Livingston  :  "  .  .  .  France,  placing  herself 
in  that  door,  assumes  to  us  the  attitude  of 
defiance.  Spain  might  have  retained  it  quietly 
for  years.  Her  pacific  disposition,  her  feeble 
state  would  induce  her  to  increase  our  facili 
ties  there.  .  .  .  Not  so  can  it  ever  be  in  the 
hands  of  France ;  the  impetuosity  of  her 
temper,  the  energy  and  restlessness  of  her 
character,  placed  in  a  point  of  eternal  fric 
tion  with  us  and  our  character,  which, 
though  quiet  and  loving  peace  and  the  pur 
suit  of  wealth,  is  high-minded,  despising 
wealth  in  competition  with  insult  or  injury, 
enterprising  and  energetic  as  any  nation  on 
earth,  —  these  circumstances  render  it  im- 


PRESIDENT  JEFFERSON  127 

possible  that  France  and  the  United  States 
can  continue  long  friends  when  they  meet 
in  so  irritable  a  position.  .  .  .  The  day  that 
France  takes  possession  of  New  Orleans  fixes 
the  sentence  which  is  to  restrain  her  forever 
within  her  low-water  mark.  .  .  .  From  that 
moment  we  must  marry  ourselves  to  the 
British  fleet  and  nation." 

Thus,  at  a  moment's  notice,  and  in  obedi 
ence  to  a  vital  change  in  circumstance,  Jef 
ferson  threw  aside  the  policy  of  a  lifetime, 
suppressed  his  liking  for  France  and  his  dis 
like  for  England,  and  entered  upon  that 
radically  new  course  which,  as  he  foresaw, 
the  interests  of  the  United  States  would  re 
quire. 

Livingston,  thus  primed,  began  negotia 
tions  for  the  purchase  of  New  Orleans  ;  and 
Jefferson  hastily  dispatched  Monroe,  as  a 
special  envoy,  for  the  same  purpose,  armed, 
it  is  supposed,  with  secret  verbal  instructions, 
to  buy,  if  possible,  not  only  New  Orleans, 
but  the  whole  of  Louisiana.  Monroe  had 
not  a  word  in  writing  to  show  that  in  pur 
chasing  Louisiana  —  if  the  act  should  be 


128  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

repudiated  by  the  nation  —  he  did  not  ex 
ceed  his  instructions.  But,  as  Mr.  Henry 
Adams  remarks,  "  Jefferson's  friends  always 
trusted  him  perfectly." 

The  moment  was  most  propitious,  for 
England  and  France  were  about  to  close  in 
that  terrific  struggle  which  ended  at  Water 
loo,  and  Napoleon  was  desperately  in  need  of 
money.  After  some  haggling  the  bargain 
was  concluded,  and,  for  the  very  moderate 
sum  of  fifteen  million  dollars,  the  United 
States  became  possessed  of  a  territory  which 
more  than  doubled  its  area. 

The  purchase  of  Louisiana  was  confessedly 
an  unconstitutional,  or  at  least  an  extra-con 
stitutional  act,  for  the  Constitution  gave  no 
authority  to  the  President  to  acquire  new 
territory,  or  to  pledge  the  credit  of  the 
United  States  in  payment.  Jefferson  him 
self  thought  that  the  Constitution  ought  to 
be  amended  in  order  to  make  the  purchase 
legal ;  but  in  this  he  was  overruled  by  his 
advisers. 

Thus,  Jefferson's  first  administration  ended 
with  a  brilliant  achievement ;  but  this  public 


PRESIDENT  JEFFERSON  129 

glory  was  far  more  than  outweighed  by  a  pri 
vate  loss.  The  President's  younger  daugh 
ter,  Mrs.  Ep-pes,  died  in  April,  1804  ;  and 
in  a  letter  to  his  old  friend,  John  Page, 
he  said :  "  Others  may  lose  of  their  abun 
dance,  but  I,  of  my  wants,  have,  lost  even 
the  half  of  all  I  had.  My  evening  prospects 
now  hang  on  the  slender  thread  of  a  single 
life.  Perhaps  I  may  be  destined  to  see  even 
this  last  cord  of  parental  affection  broken. 
The  hope  with  which  I  have  looked  forward 
to  the  moment  when,  resigning  public  cares 
to  younger  hands,  I  was  to  retire  to  that 
domestic  comfort  from  which  the  last  great 
step  is  to  be  taken,  is  fearfully  blighted." 


XI 

SECOND    PRESIDENTIAL   TERM 

THE  purchase  of  Louisiana  increased  Jef 
ferson's  popularity,  and  in  1805,  at  the  age 
of  sixty-two,  he  was  elected  to  his  second  term 
as  President  by  an  overwhelming  majority. 
Even  Massachusetts  was  carried  by  the  Re 
publicans,  and  the  total  vote  in  the  electoral 
college  stood :  162  for  Jefferson  and  Clin 
ton  ;  14  for  C.  C.  Pinckney  and  Rufus 
King,  the  Federal  candidates. 

This  result  was  due  in  part  to  the  fact 
that  Jefferson  had  stolen  the  thunder  of  the 
Federalists.  His  Louisiana  purchase,  though 
bitterly  opposed  by  the  leading  Federalists, 
who  were  blinded  by  their  hatred  of  the 
President,  was  far  more  consonant  with  Fed 
eral  than  with  Republican  principles  ;  and  in 
his  second  inaugural  address  Jefferson  went 
even  farther  in  the  direction  of  a  strong  cen 
tral  government,  for  he  said :  "  Redemption 


SECOND  PRESIDENTIAL  TERM     131 

once  effected,  the  revenue  thereby  liberated 
may,  by  a  just  repartition  among  the  States, 
and  a  corresponding  amendment  of  the  Con 
stitution,  be  applied  in  time  of  peace  to 
rivers,  canals,  roads,  arts,  manufactures,  edu 
cation,  and  other  great  objects  within  each 
State.  In  time  of  war,  .  .  .  aided  by  other 
measures  reserved  for  that  crisis,  it  may  meet 
within  the  year  all  the  expenses  of  the  year 
without  encroaching  on  the  rights  of  future 
generations  by  burdening  them  with  the  debts 
of  the  past." 

This  proposal  flatly  contradicted  what  the 
President  had  said  in  his  first  inaugural  ad 
dress,  and  was  in  strange  contrast  with  his 
criticism  made  years  before  upon  a  similar 
Federal  scheme  of  public  improvement,  that 
the  mines  of  Peru  would  not  supply  the 
moneys  which  would  be  wasted  on  this  ob 
ject.  In  later  years,  after  his  permanent 
retirement  to  Monticello,  Jefferson  seems  to 
have  reverted  to  his  earlier  views,  and  he 
condemned  the  measures  of  John  Quincy 
Adams  for  making  public  improvements  with 
national  funds. 


132  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

But  the  President  was  no  longer  to  enjoy 
a  smooth  course.  One  domestic  affair  gave 
him  much  annoyance,  and  our  foreign  rela 
tions  were  a  continual  source  of  anxiety  and 
mortification. 

Aaron  Burr  had  been  a  brilliant  .soldier 
of  the  Kevolution,  a  highly  successful  lawyer 
and  politician,  and  finally,  during  Mr.  Jef 
ferson's  first  administration,  Vice-President 
of  the  United  States.  But  in  the  year  1805 
he  found  himself,  owing  to  a  complication  of 
causes,  most  of  which,  however,  could  be 
traced  to  his  own  moral  defects,  a  bankrupt 
in  reputation  and  in  purse.  Such  being  his 
condition,  he  applied  to  the  President  for 
a  foreign  appointment ;  and  Mr.  Jefferson 
very  properly  refused  it,  frankly  explaining 
that  Burr,  whether  justly  or  unjustly,  had 
lost  the  confidence  of  the  public. 

Burr  took  this  rebuff  with  the  easy  good- 
humor  which  characterized  him,  dined  with 
the  President  a  few  days  later,  and  then 
started  westward  to  carry  out  a  scheme  which 
he  had  been  preparing  for  a  year.  His  plans 
were  so  shrouded  in  mystery  that  it  is  diffi- 


SECOND  PRESIDENTIAL  TERM     133 

cult  to  say  exactly  what  they  were,  but  it  is 
certain  that  he  contemplated  an  expedition 
against  Mexico,  with  the  intention  of  mak 
ing  himself  the  ruler  of  that  country ;  and 
it  is  possible  that  he  hoped  to  capture  New 
Orleans,    and,    after    dividing    the   United 
States,  to   annex   the  western   half   to   his 
Mexican  empire.     Burr  had  got  together  a 
small  supply  of  men  and  arms,  and  he  floated 
down  the  Ohio,  gathering  recruits  as  he  went. 
Jefferson,  with  his  usual  good  sense,  per 
ceived  the  futility  of  Burr's  designs,  which 
were  based  upon  a  false  belief  as  to  the  want 
of  loyalty  among  the  western  people  ;  but  he 
took  all  needful  precautions.     General  Wil 
kinson  was  ordered  to  protect  New  Orleans, 
Burr's   proceedings    were   denounced   by  a 
proclamation,  and  finally  Burr  himself  was 
arrested  in  Alabama,  and  brought  to  Rich 
mond  for  trial. 

The  trial  at  once  became  a  political  affair, 
the  Federalists,  to  spite  the  President,  mak 
ing  Burr's  cause  their  own,  though  he  had 
killed  Alexander  Hamilton  but  three  years 
before,  and  pretending  to  regard  him  as  an 


134  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

innocent  man  persecuted  by  the  President 
for  political  reasons.  Jefferson  himself  took 
a  hand  in  the  prosecution  to  the  extent  of 
writing  letters  to  the  district  attorney  full  of 
advice  and  suggestions.  It  would  have  been 
more  dignified  had  he  held  aloof,  but  the 
provocation  which  he  received  was  very  great. 
Burr  and  his  counsel  used  every  possible 
means  of  throwing  odium  upon  the  President ; 
and  in  this  they  were  assisted  by  Chief 
Justice  Marshall,  who  presided  at  the  trial. 
Marshall,  though  in  the  main  a  just  man, 
was  bitterly  opposed  to  Jefferson  in  political 
affairs,  and  in  this  case  he  harshly  blamed 
the  executive  for  not  procuring  evidence  with 
a  celerity  which,  under  the  circumstances, 
was  impossible.  He  also  summoned  the 
President  into  court  as  a  witness.  The  Presi 
dent,  however,  declined  to  attend,  and  the 
matter  was  not  pressed.  Burr  was  acquitted, 
chiefly  on  technical  grounds. 

The  Burr  affair,  however,  was  but  a  trifle 
compared  with  the  difficulties  arising  from 
our  relations  with  England.  That  country 
had  always  asserted  over  the  United  States 


SECOND  PRESIDENTIAL  TERM     135 

the  right  of  impressment,  a  right,  namely,  to 
search  American  ships,  and  to  take  therefrom 
any  Englishmen  found  among  the  crew.  In 
many  cases,  Englishmen  who  had  been  natu 
ralized  in  the  United  States  were  thus  taken. 
This  alleged  right  had  always  been  denied 
by  the  United  States,  and  British  persever 
ance  in  it  finally  led  to  the  war  of  1812. 
•x  Another  source  of  contention  was  the  neu 
tral  trade.  During  the  European  wars  in 
the  early  part  of  the  century  the  seaport 
towns  of  the  United  States  did  an  immense 
and  profitable  business  in  carrying  goods  to 
European  ports,  and  from  one  European  port 
to  another.  Great  Britain,  after  various 
attempts  to  discourage  American  commerce 
with  her  enemies,  undertook  to  put  it  down 
by  confiscating  vessels  of  the  United  States 
on  the  ground  that  their  cargoes  were  not 
neutral  but  belligerent  property,  —  the  pro 
perty,  that  is,  of  nations  at  war  with  Great 
Britain.  And,  no  doubt,  in  some  cases  this 
was  the  fact,  —  foreign  merchandise  having 
been  imported  to  this  country  to  get  a  neu 
tral  name  for  it,  and  thence  exported  to  a 


136  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

country  to  which  it  could  not  have  been 
shipped  directly  from  its  place  of  origin.  In 
April,  1806,  the  President  dispatched  Mr. 
Monroe  to  London  in  order,  if  possible,  to 
settle  these  disputed  matters  by  a  treaty. 
Monroe,  in  conjunction  with  Mr.  Pinckney, 
our  minister  to  England,  sent  back  a  treaty 
which  contained  no  reference  whatever  to 
the  matter  of  impressments.  It  was  the  best 
treaty  which  they  could  obtain,  but  it  was 
silent  upon  this  vital  point. 

The  situation  was  a  perilous  one ;  Eng 
land  had  fought  the  battle  of  Trafalgar  the 
year  before ;  and  was  now  able  to  carry 
everything  before  her  upon  the  high  seas. 
Nevertheless,  the  President's  conduct  was 
bold  and  prompt.  The  treaty  had  been  ne 
gotiated  mainly  by  his  own  envoy  and  friend, 
Monroe,  and  great  pressure  was  exerted  in 
favor  of  it,  —  especially  by  the  merchants 
and  shipowners  of  the  east.  But  Jefferson 
refused  even  to  lay  it  before  the  Senate, 
and  at  once  sent  it  back  to  England.  His 
position,  and  history  has  justified  it,  was 
that  to  accept  a  treaty  which  might  be  con- 


SECOND  PRESIDENTIAL  TERM     137 

strued  as  tacitly  admitting  the  right  of  im 
pressment  would  be  a  disgrace  to  the  coun 
try.  The  other  questions  at  issue  were  more 
nearly  legal  and  technical,  but  this  one 
touched  the  national  honor  ;  and  with  the 
same  right  instinct  which  Jefferson  showed 
in  1807,  the  people  of  the  United  States, 
five  years  later,  fixed  upon  this  grievance, 
out  of  the  fog  in  which  diplomacy  had  en 
veloped  our  relations  with  England,  as  the 
true  and  sufficient  cause  of  the  war  of  1812. 

Nevertheless,  Jefferson  treated  Monroe 
with  the  greatest  consideration.  At  this 
period  Monroe  and  Madison  were  both 
candidates  for  the  Republican  nomination 
for  the  presidency.  Jefferson's  choice  was 
Madison,  but  he  remained  impartial  between 
them ;  and  he  withheld  Monroe's  treaty  from 
publication  at  a  time  when  to  publish  it  would 
have  given  a  fatal  blow  to  Monroe's  prospects. 
In  every  way,  in  fact,  he  exerted  himself  to 
disguise  and  soften  Monroe's  discredit. 

The  wisdom  of  Jefferson's  course  as  to  the 
treaty  was  shown  before  three  months  had 
elapsed  by  an  act  of  British  aggression,  which, 


138  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

had  the  Monroe  treaty  been  accepted,  might 
fairly  have  been  laid  to  its  door.  In  June, 
1807,  the  British  frigate  Leopard,  having 
been  refused  permission  to  search  the  Ameri 
can  frigate  Chesapeake,  fired  upon  the  Ches 
apeake,  which  was  totally  unprepared  for 
action,  and,  after  killing  three  men  and 
wounding  eighteen,  refused  to  accept  the 
surrender  of  the  ship,  but  carried  off  three 
alleged  deserters. 

This  event  roused  a  storm  of  indignation, 
which  never  quite  subsided  until  the  insult 
had  been  effaced  by  the  blood  which  was 
shed  in  the  war  of  1812.  "  For  the  first 
time  in  their  history,"  says  Mr.  Henry  Adams, 
"  the  people  of  the  United  States  learned  hi 
June,  1807,  the  feeling  of  a  true  national 
emotion."  "  Never  since  the  battle  of  Lex 
ington,"  wrote  Jefferson,  "  have  I  seen  this 
country  in  such  a  state  of  exasperation  as  at 
present." 

War  might  easily  have  been  precipitated, 
had  Jefferson  been  carried  away  by  the  popu 
lar  excitement.  He  immediately  dispatched 
a  frigate  to  England  demanding  reparation, 


SECOND  PRESIDENTIAL  TERM     139 

and  he  issued  a  proclamation  forbidding  all 
British  men-of-war  to  enter  the  waters  of  the 
United  States,  unless  in  distress  or  bearing 
dispatches.  Jefferson  expected  war,  but  he 
meant  to  delay  it  for  a  while. 

To  his  son-in-law,  John  Eppes,  he  wrote  : 
"  Reason  and  the  usage  of  civilized  nations 
require  that  we  should  give  them  an  oppor 
tunity  of  disavowal  and  reparation.  Our 
own  interests,  too,  the  very  means  of  making 
war,  require  that  we  should  give  time  to  our 
merchants  to  gather  in  their  vessels  and 
property  and  our  seamen  now  afloat." 

Gallatin,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
even  criticised  the  President's  annual  message 
at  this  time  as  being  too  warlike  and  "  not 
in  the  style  of  the  proclamation,  which  has 
been  almost  universally  approved  at  home 
and  abroad."  It  cannot  truly  be  said,  there 
fore,  that  Jefferson  had  any  unconquerable 
aversion  to  war. 

Mr.  Canning,  the  British  Foreign  Minister, 
went  through  the  form  of  expressing  his 
regrets  for  the  Chesapeake  affair,  and  sent  a 
special  envoy  to  Washington  to  settle  the 


140  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

difficulty.     Keparation  was  made  at  last,  but 
not  till  the  year  1811. 

In  the  mean  time,  both  Great  Britain  and 
France  had  given  other  causes  of  offense, 
which  may  be  summarized  as  follows:  In 
May,  1806,  Great  Britain  declared  the 
French  ports  from  Brest  to  the  Elbe  closed  to 
American  as  to  all  other  shipping.  In  the 
following  November,  Napoleon  retorted  with 
a  decree  issued  from  Berlin,  prohibiting  all 
commerce  with  Great  Britain.  That  power 
immediately  forbade  the  coasting  trade  be 
tween  one  port  and  another  in  the  possession 
of  her  enemies.  And  in  November,  1807, 
Great  Britain  issued  the  famous  Orders  in 
Council,  which  forbade  all  trade  whatsoever 
with  France  and  her  allies,  except  on  payment 
of  a  tribute  to  Great  Britain,  each  vessel  to 
pay  according  to  the  value  of  its  cargo.  Then 
followed  Napoleon's  Milan  decree  prohibiting 
trade  with  Great  Britain,  and  declaring  that 
all  vessels  which  paid  the  tribute  demanded 
were  lawful  prizes  to  the  French  marine. 

Such  was  the  series  of  acts  which  assailed 
the  foreign  commerce  of  the  United  States, 


SECOND  PRESIDENTIAL  TERM     141 

and  wounded  the  national  honor  by  attempt 
ing  to  prostrate  the  country  at  the  mercy  of 
the  European  powers.  Diplomacy  had  been 
exhausted.  The  Chesapeake  affair,  the  right""1 
of  impressment,  the  British  decrees  and  orders  ! 
directed  against  our  commerce,  —  all  these 
causes  of  offense  had  been  tangled  into  a 
complication  which  no  man  could  unravel. 
Retaliation  on  our  part  had  become  absolutely 
necessary.  What  form  should  it  take  ?  Jef 
ferson  rejected  war,  and  proposed  an  em 
bargo  which  prohibited  commerce  between 
the  United  States  and  Europe.  The  mea 
sure  was  bitterly  opposed  by  the  New  Eng 
land  Federalists ;  but  the  President's  influ 
ence  was  so  great  that  Congress  adopted  it 
almost  without  discussion. 

Jefferson's  design,  to  use  his  own  words, 
was  "  to  introduce  between  nations  another 
umpire  than  arms ; "  and  he  expected  that 
England  would  be  starved  into  submission. 
The  annual  British  exports  to  the  United 
States  amounted  to  850,000,000.  Cutting 
off  this  trade  meant  the  throwing  out  of 
work  of  thousands  of  British  sailors  and  tens 


142  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

of  thousands  of  British  factory  hands,  who 
had  no  other  means  of  livelihood.  Mr.  Jef 
ferson  felt  confident  that  the  starvation  of 
this  class  would  bring  such  pressure  to  bear 
upon  the  English  government,  then  engaged 
in  a  death  struggle  with  Bonaparte,  that  it 
would  be  forced  to  repeal  the  laws  which 
obstructed  American  commerce.  It  is  pos 
sible  that  this  would  have  been  the  result 
had  the  embargo  been  observed  faithfully 
by  all  citizens  of  the  United  States.  Jeffer 
son  maintained  till  the  day  of  his  death  that 
such  would  have  been  the  case ;  and  Madi 
son,  no  enthusiast,  long  afterward  asserted 
that  the  American  state  department  had 
proofs  that  the  English  government  was  on 
the  point  of  yielding.  The  embargo  pressed 
hardest  of  all  upon  Virginia,  for  it  stopped 
the  exportation  of  her  staples,  —  wheat  and 
tobacco.  It  brought  about,  by  the  way,  the 
financial  ruin  of  Jefferson  himself  and  of  his 
son-in-law,  Colonel  Randolph.  But  the  Vir 
ginians  bore  it  without  a  murmur.  "  They 
drained  the  poison  which  their  own  Presi 
dent  held  obstinately  to  their  lips." 


S-ECOND  PRESIDENTIAL  TERM      143 

It  was  otherwise  in  New  England.  There 
the  disastrous  effect  of  the  embargo  was  not 
only  indirect  but  direct.  The  New  Eng 
land  farmers,  it  is  true,  could  at  least  exist 
upon  the  produce  of  their  farms  ;  but  the 
mariners,  the  sea-captains,  and  the  merchants 
of  the  coast  towns,  saw  a  total  suspension  of 
the  industry  by  which  they  lived.  New 
England  evaded  the  embargo  by  smuggling, 
and  resisted  it  tooth  and  nail.  Some  of  the 
Federal  leaders  in  that  section  believing,  or 
pretending  to  believe,  that  it  was  a  pro- 
French  measure,  were  in  secret  correspond 
ence  with  the  British  government,  and  medi 
tated  a  secession  of  the  eastern  States  from 
the  rest  of  the  country.  They  went  so  far, 
in  private  conversation  at  least,  as  to  main 
tain  the  British  right  of  impressment ;  and 
even  the  Orders  in  Council  were  defended 
by  Gardenier,  a  leading  Federalist,  and  a 
member  of  Congress. 

The  present  generation  has  witnessed  a 
similar  exhibition  of  anglomania,  when,  upon 
the  assertion  of  the  Monroe  doctrine  in  re 
spect  to  Venezuela,  by  President  Cleveland, 


144  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

his  attitude  was  criticised  more  severely  by 
a  group  in  New  York  and  Boston  than  it 
was  by  the  English  themselves. 

Jefferson's  effort  to  enforce  the  embargo 
and  his  calm  resistance  to  New  England 
fury  showed  extraordinary  firmness  of  will 
and  tenacity  of  purpose.  In  August,  1808, 
he  wrote  to  General  Dearborn,  Secretary  of 
War,  who  was  then  in  Maine  :  "  The  Tories 
of  Boston  openly  threaten  insurrection  if 
their  importation  of  flour  is  stopped.  The 
next  post  will  stop  it." 

Blood  was  soon  shed ;  but  Jefferson  did 
not  shrink.  The  army  was  stationed  along 
the  Canadian  frontier,  to  prevent  smuggling ; 
gunboats  and  frigates  patrolled  the  coast. 
The  embargo  failed ;  but  Mr.  Henry  Adams, 
the  ablest  and  fairest  historian  of  this  period, 
declares  that  it  "was  an  experiment  in  poli 
tics  well  worth  making.  In  the  scheme  of 
President  Jefferson,  non-intercourse  was  the 
substitute  for  war.  .  .  .  Failure  of  the  em 
bargo  meant  in  his  mind  not  only  a  recur 
rence  to  the  practice  of  war,  but  to  every 
political  and  social  evil  that  war  had  always 


SECOND  PRESIDENTIAL   TERM     145 

brought  in  its  train.  In  such  a  case  the 
crimes  and  corruptions  of  Europe,  which 
had  been  the  object  of  his  political  fears, 
must,  as  he  believed,  sooner  or  later,  teem 
in  the  fat  soil  of  America.  To  avert  a  dis 
aster  so  vast  was  a  proper  motive  for  states 
manship,  and  justified  disregard  for  smaller 
interests."  Mr.  Parton  observes,  with  al 
most  as  much  truth  as  humor,  that  the 
embargo  was  approved  by  the  two  highest 
authorities  in  Europe,  namely,  Napoleon 
Bonaparte  and  the  "  Edinburgh  Review." 
/Perhaps  the  fundamental  error  in  Jeffer 
son's  theory  was  that  nations  are  governed 
mainly  by  motives  of  self-interest.  He 
thought  that  England  would  cease  to  legis 
late  against  American  commerce,  when  it 
was  once  made  plain  that  such  a  course  was 
prejudicial  to  her  own  interests.  But  na 
tions,  like  individuals,  are  influenced  in  their 
relations  to  others  far  more  by  pride  and 
patriotism,  and  even  by  prejudice,  than  by 
material  self-interest.  The  only  way  in 
which  America  could  win  respect  and  fair 
treatment  from  Europe  was  by  fighting,  or 


146  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

at  least  by  showing  a  perfect  readiness  to 
fight.     This  she  did  by  the  war  of  1812y 

The  embargo  was  an  academic  policy,  — 
the  policy  of  a  philosopher  rather  than  that 
of  a  practical  man  of  affairs.  Turreau,  the 
French  ambassador,  wrote  to  Talleyrand, 
in  May,  1806,  that  the  President  "  has  little 
energy  and  still  less  of  that  audacity  which 
is  indispensable  in  a  place  so  eminent,  what 
ever  may  be  the  form  of  government.  The 
slightest  event  makes  him  lose  his  balance, 
and  he  does  not  even  know  how  to  disguise 
the  impression  which  he  receives  .  .  .  He 
has  made  himself  ill,  and  has  grown  ten 
years  older." 

Jefferson  had  energy  and  audacity,  —  but 
he  was  energetic  and  audacious  only  by  fits 
and  starts.  He  was  too  sensitive,  too  full  of 
ideas,  too  far-sighted,  too  conscious  of  all 
possible  results  for  a  man  of  action.  During 
the  last  three  months  of  his  term  he  made 
no  attempt  to  settle  the  difficulties  in  which 
the  country  was  involved,  declaring  that  he 
felt  bound  to  do  nothing  which  might  em 
barrass  his  successor.  But  it  may  be  doubted 


SECOND  PRESIDENTIAL  TERM     147 

if  he  did  not  unconsciously  decline  the  task 
rather  from  its  difficulty  than  because  he 
felt  precluded  from  undertaking  it.  Self- 
knowledge  was  never  Mr.  Jefferson's  strong 
point. 

But  he  had  done  his  best,  and  if  his 
scheme  had  failed,  the  failure  was  not  an 
ignoble  one.  He  was  still  the  most  beloved, 
as  well  as  the  best  hated  man  in  the  United 
States ;  and  he  could  have  had  a  third  term, 
if  he  would  have  taken  it. 

He  retired,  permanently,  as  it  proved,  to 
Monticello,  wearied  and  harassed,  but  glad 
to  be  back  on  his  farm,  in  the  bosom  of  his 
family,  and  among  his  neighbors.  His  fel 
low-citizens  of  Albemarle  County  desired  to 
meet  the  returning  President,  and  escort 
him  to  his  home  ;  but  Mr.  Jefferson,  charac 
teristically,  avoided  this  demonstration,  and 
received  instead  an  address,  to  which  he 
made  a  reply  that  closed  in  a  fit  and  pa 
thetic  manner  his  public  career.  "...  The 
part  which  I  have  acted  on  the  theatre  of 
public  life  has  been  before  them  [his  coun 
trymen]  ,  and  to  their  sentence  I  submit  it ; 


148  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

but  the  testimony  of  my  native  county,  of 
the  individuals  who  have  known  me  in 
private  life,  to  my  conduct  in  its  various 
duties  and  relations,  is  the  more  grateful  as 
proceeding  from  eyewitnesses  and  observers, 
from  triers  of  the  vicinage.  Of  you,  then, 
my  neighbors,  I  may  ask  in  the  face  of  the 
world,  '  whose  ox  have  I  taken,  or  whom 
have  I  defrauded  ?  Whom  have  I  oppressed, 
or  of  whose  hand  have  I  received  a  bribe  to 
blind  mine  eyes  therewith  ?  '  On  your  ver 
dict  I  rest  with  conscious  security." 


XII 

A  PUBLIC   MAN    IN   PRIVATE   LIFE 

JEFFERSON'S  second  term  as  President 
ended  March  4,  1809,  and  during  the  rest 
of  his  life  he  lived  at  Monticello,  with  occa 
sional  visits  to  his  more  retired  estate  at  Pop 
lar  Forest,  and  to  the  homes  of  his  friends, 
but  never  going  beyond  the  confines  of  Vir 
ginia.  Just  before  leaving  Washington,  he 
had  written :  "  Never  did  a  prisoner  released 
from  his  chains  feel  such  relief  as  I  shall  on 
shaking  off  the  shackles  of  power.  Nature 
intended  me  for  the  tranquil  pursuits  of  sci 
ence  by  rendering  them  my  supreme  delight. 
But  the  enormities  of  the  times  in  which 
I  have  lived  have  forced  me  to  take  a  part 
in  resisting  them,  and  to  commit  myself  on 
the  boisterous  ocean  of  political  passions." 

Though  no  longer  in  office,  Jefferson  re 
mained  till  his  death  the  chief  personage  in 
the  United  States,  and  his  authority  continued 


150  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

to  be  almost  supreme  among  the  leaders  as 
well  as  among  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Ee- 
publican  party.  Madison  first,  and  Monroe 
afterward,  consulted  him  in  all  the  most 
important  matters  which  arose  during  the 
sixteen  years  of  their  double  terms  as  Presi 
dent.  Long  and  frequent  letters  passed  be 
tween  them  ;  and  both  Madison  and  Monroe 
often  visited  Jefferson  at  Monticello. 

The  Monroe  doctrine,  as  it  is  called,  was 
first  broached  by  Jefferson.  In  a  letter  of 
August  4,  1820,  to  William  Short,  he 
said  :  "  The  day  is  not  far  distant,  when  we 
may  formally  require  a  meridian  through 
the  ocean  which  separates  the  two  hemi 
spheres  on  the  hither  side  of  which  no 
European  gun  shall  ever  be  heard,  nor  an 
American  on  the  other ;  "  and  he  spoke  of 
"the  essential  policy  of  interdicting  in  the 
seas  and  territories  of  both  Americas  the 
ferocious  and  sanguinary  contests  of  Europe." 
Later,  when  applied  to  by  Monroe  himself, 
in  October,  1823,  Jefferson  wrote  to  him  : 
"  Our  first  and  fundamental  maxim  should 
be  never  to  entangle  ourselves  in  the  broils 


A  PUBLIC  MAN  IN  PRIVATE  LIFE  151 

of  Europe.  Our  second,  never  to  suffer 
Europe  to  meddle  in  cisatlantic  affairs." 
The  whole  letter,  a  long  one,  deserves  to  be 
read  as  the  first  exposition  of  what  has  since 
become  a  famous  doctrine. 

The  darling  object  of  Mr.  Jefferson's  last 
years  was  the  founding  of  the  University  of 
Virginia  at  Charlottesville.  For  this  pur 
pose  he  gave  $1000  ;  many  of  his  neighbors 
in  Albemarle  County  joined  him  with  gifts  ; 
and  through  Jefferson's  influence,  the  legis 
lature  appropriated  considerable  sums.  But 
money  was  the  least  of  Jefferson's  endowment 
of  the  University.  He  gave  of  the  matur 
ity  of  his  judgment  and  a  great  part  of 
his  time.  He  was  made  regent.  He  drew 
the  plans  for  the  buildings,  and  overlooked 
their  construction,  riding  to  the  University 
grounds  almost  every  day,  a  distance  of  four 
miles,  and  back,  and  watching  with  pater 
nal  solicitude  the  laying  of  every  brick  and 
stone.  His  design  was  the  perhaps  over- 
ambitious  one  of  displaying  in  the  Univer 
sity  buildings  the  various  leading  styles  of 
architecture  ;  and  certain  practical  inconven- 


152  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

iences,  such  as  the  entire  absence  of  closets 
from  the  houses  of  the  professors,  marred 
the  result.  Some  offense  also  was  given  to 
the  more  religious  people  of  Virginia,  by  the 
selection  of  a  Unitarian  as  the  first  professor. 
However,  Jefferson's  enthusiasm,  ingenuity, 
and  thoroughness  carried  the  scheme  through 
with  success ;  and  the  University  still  stands 
as  a  monument  to  its  founder. 

It  should  be  recorded,  moreover,  that 
under  Jefferson's  regency  the  University  of 
Virginia  adopted  certain  reforms,  which  even 
Harvard,  the  most  progressive  of  eastern 
universities,  did  not  attain  till  more  than 
half  a  century  later.  These  were,  an  elective 
system  of  studies  ;  the  abolition  of  rules  and 
penalties  for  the  preservation  of  order,  and 
the  abolition  of  compulsory  attendance  at 
religious  services. 

Mr.  Jefferson's  daily  life  was  simple  and 
methodical.  He  rose  as  soon  as  it  was  light 
enough  for  him  to  see  the  hands  of  a  clock 
which  was  opposite  his  bed.  Till  break 
fast  time,  which  was  about  nine  o'clock,  he 
employed  himself  in  writing.  The  whole 


A  PUBLIC  MAN  IN  PRIVATE  LIFE   153 

morning  was  devoted  to  an  immense  corre 
spondence  ;  the  discharge  of  which  was  not 
only  mentally,  but  physically  distressing, 
inasmuch  as  his  crippled  hands,  each  wrist 
having  been  fractured,  could  not  be  used 
without  pain.  In  a  letter  to  his  old  friend, 
John  Adams,  he  wrote :  "  I  can  read  by 
candle-light  only,  and  stealing  long  hours 
from  my  rest ;  nor  would  that  time  be  in 
dulged  to  me  could  I  by  that  light  see  to 
write.  From  sunrise  to  one  or  two  o'clock, 
and  often  from  dinner  to  dark,  I  am  drudg 
ing  at  the  writing-table.  And  all  this  to 
answer  letters,  in  which  neither  interest  nor 
inclination  on  my  part  enters  ;  and  often 
from  persons  whose  names  I  have  never 
before  heard.  Yet  writing  civilly,  it  is  hard 
to  refuse  them  civil  answers."  At  his  death 
Jefferson  left  copies  of  16,000  letters,  being 
only  a  part  of  those  written  by  himself,  and 
26,000  letters  written  by  others  to  him. 

At  one  o'clock  he  set  out  upon  horseback, 
and  was  gone  for  one  or  two  hours,  —  never 
attended  by  a  servant,  even  when  he  became 
old  and  infirm.  He  continued  these  rides 


154  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

until  he  had  become  so  feeble  that  he  had 
to  be  lifted  to  the  saddle  ;  and  his  mount 
was  always  a  fiery  one.  Once,  in  Mr.  Jef 
ferson's  old  age,  news  came  that  a  serious 
accident  had  happened  in  the  neighboring 
village  to  one  of  his  grandsons.  Immedi 
ately  he  ordered  his  horse  to  be  brought 
round,  and  though  it  was  night  and  very 
dark,  he  mounted,  despite  the  protests  of 
the  household,  and,  at  a  run,  dashed  down 
the  steep  ascent  by  which  Monticello  is 
reached.  The  family  held  their  breath  till 
the  tramp  of  his  horse's  feet,  on  the  level 
ground  below,  could  faintly  be  heard. 

At  half  past  three  or  four  he  dined ;  and 
at  six  he  returned  to  the  drawing-room, 
where  coffee  was  served.  The  evening  was 
spent  in  reading  or  conversation,  and  at 
nine  he  went  to  bed.  "  His  diet,"  relates  a 
distinguished  visitor,  Daniel  Webster,  "  is 
simple,  but  he  seems  restrained  only  by  his 
taste.  His  breakfast  is  tea  and  coffee,  bread 
always  fresh  from  the  oven,  of  which  he 
does  not  seem  afraid,  with  at  times  a  slight 
accompaniment  of  cold  meat.  He  enjoys 


A  PUBLIC  MAN  IN  PRIVATE  LIFE    155 

his  dinner  well,  taking  with  his  meat  a  large 
proportion  of  vegetables."  The  fact  is  that 
he  used  meat  only  as  a  sort  of  condiment  to 
vegetables.  "  He  has  a  strong  preference 
for  the  wines  of  the  continent,  of  which  he 
has  many  sorts  of  excellent  quality.  .  .  . 
Dinner  is  served  in  half  Virginian,  half 
French  style,  in  good  taste  and  abundance. 
No  wine  is  put  on  the  table  till  the  cloth  is 
removed.  In  conversation,  Mr.  Jefferson  is 
easy  and  natural,  and  apparently  not  ambi 
tious  ;  it  is  not  loud  as  challenging  general 
attention,  but  usually  addressed  to  the  person 
next  him."  His  health  remained  good  till 
within  a  few  months  of  his  death,  and  he 
never  lost  a  tooth. 

Scarcely  less  burdensome  than  his  corre 
spondence  was  the  throng  of  visitors  at  Mon- 
ticello,  of  all  nationalities,  from  every  State 
in  the  Union,  some  coming  from  veneration, 
some  from  curiosity,  some  from  a  desire  to 
obtain  free  quarters.  Groups  of  people  often 
stood  about  the  house  and  in  the  halls  to  see 
Jefferson  pass  from  his  study  to  his  dining- 
room.  It  is  recorded  that  "  a  female  once 


156  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

punched  through  a  window-pane  of  the  house 
with  her  parasol  to  get  a  better  view  of  him." 
As  many  as  fifty  guests  sometimes  lodged 
in  the  house.  "  As  a  specimen  of  Vir 
ginia  life,"  relates  one  biographer,  "we  will 
mention  that  a  friend  from  abroad  came  to 
Monticello,  with  a  family  of  six  persons,  and 
remained  ten  months.  .  .  .  Accomplished 
young  kinswomen  habitually  passed  two  or 
three  of  the  summer  months  there,  as  they 
would  now  at  a  fashionable  watering-place. 
They  married  the  sons  of  Mr.  Jefferson's 
friends,  and  then  came  with  their  families." 
The  immense  expense  entailed  by  these 
hospitalities,  added  to  the  debt,  amounting 
to  $20,000,  which  Mr.  Jefferson  owed  when 
he  left  Washington,  crippled  him  financially. 
Moreover,  Colonel  Kandolph,  who  managed 
his  estate  for  many  years,  though  a  good 
farmer,  was  a  poor  man  of  business.  It  was 
a  common  saying  in  the  neighborhood  that 
nobody  raised  better  crops  or  got  less  money 
for  them  than  Colonel  Randolph.  The  em 
bargo,  and  the  period  of  depression  which 
followed  the  war  of  1812,  went  far  to  impov- 


A  PUBLIC  MAN  IN  PRIVATE  LIFE    157 

erish  the  Virginia  planters.  Monroe  died 
a  bankrupt,  and  Madison's  widow  was  left 
almost  in  want  of  bread.  Jefferson  himself 
wrote  in  1814  :  "  What  can  we  raise  for  the 
market  ?  Wheat  ?  we  can  only  give  it  to  our 
horses,  as  we  have  been  doing  since  harvest. 
Tobacco?  It  is  not  worth  the  pipe  it  is 
smoked  in.  Some  say  whiskey,  but  all  man 
kind  must  become  drunkards  to  consume  it." 
Jefferson,  also,  was  so  anxious  lest  his  slaves 
should  be  overworked,  that  the  amount  of 
labor  performed  upon  his  plantation  was 
much  less  than  it  should  have  been.  And, 
to  cap  the  climax  of  his  financial  troubles,  he 
lost  $20,000  by  indorsing  to  that  amount 
for  his  intimate  friend,  Governor  Nicholas, 
an  honorable  but  unfortunate  man.  It 
should  be  added  that  Mr.  Nicholas,  in  his  last 
hours,  "  declared  with  unspeakable  emotion 
that  Mr.  Jefferson  had  never  by  a  word,  by 
a  look,  or  in  any  other  way,  made  any  allu 
sion  to  his  loss  by  him." 

In  1814,  Mr.  Jefferson  sold  his  library 
to  Congress  for  $23,950,  about  one  half  its 
cost ;  and  in  the  very  year  of  his  death  he 


158  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

requested  of  the  Virginia  legislature  that  a 
law  might  be  passed  permitting  him  to  sell 
some  of  his  farms  by  means  of  a  lottery, 
—  the  times  being  such  that  they  could  be 
disposed  of  in  no  other  way.  He  even  pub 
lished  some  "  Thoughts  on  Lotteries,"  -  —  by 
way  of  advancing  this  project.  The  legis 
lature  granted  his  request,  with  reluctance  ; 
but  in  the  mean  time  his  necessities  became 
known  throughout  the  country,  and  subscrip 
tions  were  made  for  his  relief.  The  lottery 
was  suspended,  and  Jefferson  died  in  the 
belief  that  Monticello  would  be  saved  as  a 
home  for  his  family. 

In  March,  1826,  Mr.  Jefferson's  health 
began  to  fail;  but  so  late  as  June  24  he 
was  well  enough  to  write  a  long  letter  in 
reply  to  an  invitation  to  attend  the  fiftieth 
celebration,  at  Washington,  of  the  4th  of 
July.  During  the  3d  of  July  he  dozed  hour 
after  hour  under  the  influence  of  opiates, 
rousing  occasionally,  and  uttering  a  few 
words.  It  was  evident  that  his  end  was 
very  near.  His  family  and  he  himself  fer 
vently  desired  that  he  might  live  till  the  4th 


A  PUBLIC  MAN  IN  PRIVATE  LIFE    159 

of  July.  At  eleven  in  the  evening  of  July  3 
he  whispered  to  Mr.  Trist,  the  husband  of 
one  of  his  granddaughters,  who  sat  by  him : 
"  This  is  the  fourth  ?  "  Not  bearing  to  dis 
appoint  him,  Mr.  Trist  remained  silent ;  and 
Mr.  Jefferson  feebly  asked  a  second  time : 
"  This  is  the  fourth  ?  "  Mr.  Trist  nodded  as 
sent.  "  Ah !  "  he  breathed,  and  sank  into  a 
slumber  from  which  he  never  awoke ;  but  his 
end  did  not  come  till  half  past  twelve  in  the 
afternoon  of  Independence  Day.  On  the 
same  day,  at  Quincy,  died  John  Adams,  his 
last  words  being,  "  Thomas  Jefferson  still 
lives ! " 

The  double  coincidence  made  a  strong  im 
pression  upon  the  imagination  of  the  Ameri 
can  people.  "  When  it  became  known,"  says 
Mr.  Parton,  "  that  the  author  of  the  Decla 
ration  and  its  most  powerful  defender  had 
both  breathed  their  last  on  the  Fourth  of 
July,  the  fiftieth  since  they  had  set  it  apart 
from  the  roll  of  common  days,  it  seemed  as 
if  Heaven  had  given  its  visible  and  unerring 
sanction  to  the  work  which  they  had  done." 

Jefferson's  body  was  buried  at  Monticello, 


160  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

and  on  the  tombstone  is  inscribed,  as  he 
desired,  the  following :  "  Here  was  buried 
Thomas  Jefferson,  author  of  the  Declaration 
of  American  Independence,  of  the  Statute  of 
Virginia  for  Religious  Freedom,  and  Father 
of  the  University  of  Virginia." 

Jefferson's  expectation  that  Monticello 
would  remain  the  property  of  his  descend 
ants  was  not  fulfilled.  His  debts  were  paid 
to  the  uttermost  farthing  by  his  executor 
and  grandson,  Thomas  Jefferson  Randolph ; 
but  Martha  Randolph  and  her  family  were 
left  homeless  and  penniless.  When  this  be 
came  known,  the  legislatures  of  South  Caro 
lina  and  Louisiana  each  voted  to  Mrs.  Ran 
dolph  a  gift  of  110,000.  She  died  suddenly, 
in  1836,  at  the  age  of  sixty-three.  Monti- 
cello  passed  into  the  hands  of  strangers. 

Jefferson  had  his  faults  and  defects.  As 
a  statesman  and  ruler,  he  showed  at  times 
irresolution,  want  of  energy  and  of  audacity, 
and  a  misunderstanding  of  human  nature ; 
and  at  times  his  judgment  was  clouded  by 
the  political  prejudices  which  were  common 
in  his  day.  His  attitude  in  the  X  Y  Z 


A  PUBLIC  MAN  IN  PRIVATE  LIFE    161 

business,  his  embargo  policy,  and  his  policy 
or  want  of  policy  after  the  failure  of  the 
embargo,  —  in  these  cases,  and  perhaps  in 
these  alone,  his  defects  are  exhibited.  It 
is  certain  also  that  although  at  times  frank 
and  outspoken  to  a  fault,  he  was  at  other 
times  over-complaisant  and  insincere.  To 
Aaron  Burr,  for  example,  he  expressed  him 
self  in  terms  of  friendship  which  he  could 
hardly  have  felt ;  and,  once,  in  writing  to  a 
minister  of  the  gospel  he  implied,  upon  his 
own  part,  a  belief  in  revelation  which  he  did 
not  really  feel.  It  seems  to  be  true  also  that 
Jefferson  had  an  overweening  desire  to  win 
the  approbation  of  his  fellow-countrymen ; 
and  at  times,  though  quite  unconsciously  to 
himself,  this  motive  led  him  into  courses 
which  were  rather  selfish  than  patriotic. 
This  was  the  case,  perhaps,  in  his  negotia 
tions  with  the  English  minister  after  the  fail 
ure  of  the  embargo.  It  is  charged  against 
him,  also,  that  he  avoided  unpleasant  situa 
tions  ;  and  that  he  said  or  did  nothing  to 
check  the  Republican  slanders  which  were 
cast  upon  Washington  and  upon  John 


162  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Adams.  But  when  this  much  has  been 
said,  all  has  been  said.  As  a  citizen,  hus 
band,  father,  friend,  and  master,  Jefferson 
was  almost  an  ideal  character.  No  man  was 
ever  more  kind,  more  amiable,  more  tender, 
more  just,  more  generous.  To  her  children, 
Mrs.  Randolph  declared  that  never,  never 
had  she  witnessed  a  particle  of  injustice  in 
her  father,  —  never  had  she  heard  him  say  a 
word  or  seen  him  do  an  act  which  she  at  the 
time  or  afterward  regretted.  He  was  mag 
nanimous,  —  as  when  he  frankly  forgave 
John  Adams  for  the  injustice  of  his  mid 
night  appointments.  Though  easily  pro 
voked,  he  never  bore  malice.  In  matters  of 
business  and  in  matters  of  politics  he  was 
punctiliously  honorable.  How  many  times 
he  paid  his  British  debt  has  already  been  re 
lated.  On  one  occasion  he  drew  his  cheque 
to  pay  the  duties  on  certain  imported  wines 
which  might  have  come  in  free,  —  yet  made 
no  merit  of  the  action,  for  it  never  came  to 
light  until  long  after  his  death.  In  the  pre 
sidential  campaigns  when  he  was  a  candi 
date,  he  never  wrote  a  letter  or  made  a  sign 


A  PUBLIC  MAN  IN  PRIVATE  LIFE    163 

to  influence  the  result.  He  would  not  say 
a  word  by  way  of  promise  in  1801,  when  a 
word  would  have  given  him  the  presidency, 
and  when  so  honorable  a  man  as  John  Adams 
thought  that  he  did  wrong  to  withhold  it. 
There  was  no  vanity  or  smallness  in  his 
character.  It  was  he  and  not  Dickinson 
who  wrote  the  address  to  the  King,  set  forth 
by  the  Continental  Congress  of  1775 ;  but 
Dickinson^enjoyed  the  fame  of  it  throughout 
Jefferson's  lifetime. 

Above  all,  he  was  patriotic  and  con 
scientious.  When  he  lapsed,  it  was  in  some 
subordinate  matter,  and  because  a  little  self- 
deception  clouded  his  sight.  But  in  all  im 
portant  matters,  in  all  emergencies,  he  stood 
firm  as  a  rock  for  what  he  considered  to 
be  right,  unmoved  by  the  entreaties  of  his 
friends  or  by  the  jeers,  threats,  and  taunts  of 
his  enemies.  He  shrank  with  almost  fem 
inine  repugnance  from  censure  and  turmoil, 
but  when  the  occasion  demanded  it,  he 
faced  even  these  with  perfect  courage  and 
resolution.  His  course  as  Secretary  of  State, 
and  his  enforcement  of  the  embargo,  are 
examples. 


164  THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

Jefferson's  political  career  was  bottomed 
upon  a  great  principle  which  he  never,  for 
one  moment,  lost  sight  of  or  doubted,  no 
matter  how  difficult  the  present,  or  how  dark 
the  future.  He  believed  in  the  people,  in 
their  capacity  for  self-government,  and  in  their 
right  to  enjoy  it.  This  belief  shaped  his 
course,  and,  in  spite  of  minor  inconsistencies, 
made  it  consistent.  It  was  on  account  of 
this  belief,  and  of  the  faith  and  courage  with 
which  he  put  it  in  practice,  that  he  became 
the  idol  of  his  countrymen,  and  attained  a 
unique  position  in  the  history  of  the  world. 


RETURN    CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

TO—  *    202  Main  Library 

LOAN  PERIOD  1 
HOME  USE 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

Renewals  and  Recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  the  due 

Books  may  be  Renewed  by  calling        642-3405 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


1  - 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 


r~~  A    o/i~7O/' 


YA  045R3 
U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


